


on memory and the permanence of being

by englishsummerrain



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:31:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: - Your name is Yoon Jeonghan- It’s your birthday today, that’s why there’s cake. You can eat it if you want to.- You're in hospital. You had an accident. It wasn't your fault.- Brazil won the 2008 world cup (I don’t know why you keep asking this).- Yes, you’ve read this list before.





	on memory and the permanence of being

**Author's Note:**

> for juli, my shining star.

 

 

“Your favourite colour was blue, not like the ocean, but like the horizon on a brisk spring day.”

 

The voice is nameless yet familiar, soft amongst the murmurs which leak from behind the curtain drawn around him. It paints a splash of something bright against the blur of the hospital nights, through the haze of the morphine and the backwards progression of time.

 

“And what’s yours?”

 

His words dance on the tip of his tongue, yet their laces are tied and they tumble in a strange cadence through the seam of his lips.

 

“Red. Bright, burning red. The colour of the lanterns released over the river in the new year.”

 

“My favourite colour is gold.”

 

“Why?” the other voice asks, curious.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

\--

 

Gold is the colour of the card that sits on his bedside table. It’s been there for as long as he can remember, which is to say it could have been there a hundred years ago or since yesterday morning. He picks it up, runs his fingers across the foil, observes the smudges they leave behind. The surface feels slippery, but the inside is rough, covered in indents where the nib of the pens used to sign it have carved into the cardboard.

 

_Get well soon._

 

He places it back, taking care not to let the tremor in his wrist knock the others that stand beside it down like dominoes. Instead he turns to the boy sitting beside his bed, whose eyes are lidded and glasses have slipped halfway down his nose. There’s scratches of stubble on his chin and pitted scars on his cheeks, shapes and textures he wishes he could run his fingers across to find how they differ from his own.

 

“Who are you?” he asks.

 

Such a tired question.

 

It wakes the boy up, pulls him back to reality like a swimmer breaking the surface. He pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles with a hint of something fragile, something that shimmers in his dark eyes when he hesitates a second before he speaks.

 

“Junhui.”

 

One of the first things he learns is what it looks like when someone’s heart breaks.

 

\--

 

In a way it’s like his life, his being, his very soul, has been cleaved in two.

 

A before the accident, and an after.

 

Except whoever swung the axe had butchered it. The before is smashed into pieces, bleeding shards of a broken mirror that show a stranger’s reflection, a stranger everyone seems to know except for him.

 

The nurses come round to his bedside and ask him simple questions, things which fill in spaces he’d rather paint over with important details, like what his favourite food was and what he had wanted to be when he was a child. Someone leaves a notebook beside his bed but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it until someone else comes and picks up a pen, writes words down like the ones scribbled in the cards that seem to pile up endlessly.

 

He stares at a blank page, pen held between his fingers, and writes a single word.

 

_Who?_

 

\--

 

_Who are you?_

 

_Who am I?_

 

\--

 

Junhui returns. He writes the two words he’s heard a hundred times, two words he clings onto like a lifeline.

 

_Yoon Jeonghan_

 

He knows it’s his name, but he doesn’t know what that means. They could have told him a million different things and he’d have accepted each as readily as the next. His mind is malleable and he believes in everything he’s told, like a child told that Santa Claus is real and the tooth fairy will collect their milk teeth in exchange for a fistful of change.

 

What they do tell him is that he hit his head. That he broke his ribs and punctured his lung. That his best friends are Choi Seungcheol and Hong Jisoo ( _Joshua, you can call me Joshua_ ). His father passed twelve years ago, his mother four. He lives in a large apartment above the bookshop that she had owned, which he had inherited, and he has a cat, a two year old Scottish Fold named Mochi. He liked photography. He loved to read.

 

All of these are parts of the whole, but the whole they make is an origami heart, pretty to look at but functionally useless. It doesn’t beat, and it doesn’t tell him anything. Just leads him to ask more questions, hoping each might be the missing piece that finally makes it work.

 

\--

 

And Junhui?

 

He has to ask about Junhui, because there’s a sorrow that seems to weigh on his shoulders every time he looks at Jeonghan, every time they speak. He’s the biggest mystery of them all. When they show him how to use his phone he finds it’s an art gallery and all the exhibitions are about Junhui - hall after hall dedicated to the shrug of his shoulders, the line of his nose, his laughs and his smiles. There’s a weight behind the photos but he doesn’t know how to carry it, so he leaves it undisturbed, even after he learns he had been dating Junhui, that the two of them had been talking about getting married on a beach somewhere in California

 

\--

 

“Your voice sounds funny,” Jeonghan says. There’s something about the way Junhui’s lips shape his words, something different from Joshua or Seungcheol, or from his own.

 

“Funny?” Junhui says, smiling.

 

“Different. I don’t know.”

 

“Is it my accent?”

 

Jeonghan’s thoughts hitch, his brain trying to drag the definition from the stacks of words his past self had filed away.

 

“It’s the way I pronounce my words,” Junhui clarifies with a soft laugh, “I’m not from here. Korean wasn’t the first language I learned. Or the second, actually.”

 

It clicks into place immediately.

 

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says, “I think that’s it.”

 

Junhui smiles.

 

“You told me you liked my accent when we first met.”

 

“Don't listen to him,” Seungcheol says, looking up from the ragged paperback in his hand. “You hated his accent because it reminded you of the woman who managed your trust.”

 

“Well it's not like it's gonna remind him of that anymore,” Junhui says.

 

Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. More questions to ask, later, later.

 

“Where is your accent from, then?”

 

“China. Guangdong.”

 

He doesn’t know what that means, either. He knows it’s somewhere else, but it could be next door, or on the other side of the globe. Trying to find the meaning is like searching through a dictionary with half the definitions crossed out.

 

He learns China is a country. Not this country, this is South Korea. China is across the sea, but not the sea to the east (which is where Japan is), but the sea to the west. It’s large, but Junhui is from the south, where hundreds of rivers converge into a massive harbour. He looks up Shenzhen on his phone and spends hours walking the streets and tries to imagine Junhui there, wandering through the endless crowds of people. He tries to imagine what kind of person that might have made Junhui, but he doesn’t know.

 

It’s hopeless to try when he doesn’t even know what kind of person Seoul made him.

 

\--

 

And so, it goes like this.

 

Jeonghan looks after the shop, looks after it because his mother had given it to him, built it from the ground up and sung him to sleep between its shelves.

 

Not that he knows that. To him it’s falling apart, walls sagging, stacks of novels with the embossing worn off pushed together like skyscrapers ready to tumble down at a moment’s notice. It’s a city of silence and a million words, and he sits in the great armchair under the window to try to listen.

 

It was here his parents had met and here he had met Junhui too, in a summer haze where the sunlight filtered through the dust suspended in the air, and the shelves threatened to collapse under the weight of the words carried upon them.

 

The bell on the threshold doesn’t ring. He says as much when they unlock the shop, and Junhui says it’s been broken for as long as he can remember. It was broken when they met, the door propped open, Jeonghan resting with his feet on the counter, Mochi curled up on top of a box of coverless paperbacks.

 

Junhui was tan and warm, his straw hat frayed at the edges and the sleeves cut from his shirt. He wandered into Jeonghan’s life and changed it forever. It had been as simple as that.

 

(He hadn’t known this. Junhui had filled him in, after showing him a scratched polaroid he kept in the pocket of his wallet. The camera’s flash had made his complexion ghastly and his eyes had been closed, but Jeonghan had stared long and hard at the photo, trying to absorb the details until Junhui just smiled and told him to keep it.)

 

\--

 

 _No, it goes like this_.

 

“You used to hate that photo,” Joshua says, leaning across the table shoved in the least crowded corner of his apartment. One of his roommates slams the shower door and he barely flinches, running his finger around the rim of his near empty beer bottle.

 

“I probably used to do a lot of things,” Jeonghan counters. Joshua smiles and lowers his eyes.

 

“Apologies,” he says. There’s something stained across the table surface, deep green like moss growing through the wood of a long dead tree. He taps it as he speaks. “I can’t even imagine how it is for you.”

 

Jeonghan shakes his head. His fingers are sticky from his dinner and he wishes he’d taken the opportunity to wash them when it had been offered.

 

“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologise for everything.”

 

“I just wish I could do something more for you.”

 

Jeonghan exhales. So much pity, from everyone he meets. When he’d bought hotteok from the tiny stand outside his neurologist’s office the lady cooking had shook her head and sighed, muttered about the angry cuts that criss-crossed his eyebrow and how sad it must be for him, being so pretty.

 

He takes the back entrance to the building next time.

 

“Travel back a few years,” Jeonghan says, “and tell me to keep a really good diary.”

 

Joshua laughs.

 

“I’ll keep that in mind when I get my time machine.”

 

“Now that’s a good friend,” Jeonghan says.

 

Joshua drains the last of his beer and reaches under the table for another one, offers it to Jeonghan, who shakes his head. He’d tried a sip and it was foul, bitter and strong, coupled with an aftertaste like petrol that clung to his tongue.

 

Joshua shrugs upon the refusal and cracks the top off with his bottle opener.

 

“It’s the least I could do.”

 

The shower is vacated and Jeonghan washes the film from his hands, has to fight to get the last of the soap out of the dispenser. He shakes the thin bubbles onto the tiles and follows Joshua into his room - into the aftermath of a hurricane that had torn up his drawers and scattered his clothes all over the floor.

 

The cross that had once hung around his neck now hangs in his closet, wrapped around the door handle and clattering against the wood as he pulls it open. Jeonghan doesn’t ask if it’s from lack of faith or a silent rebellion. He tries not to stare at the carnage scattered around his room but it’s nigh impossible to ignore - the half empty bottle of soju on his bedside table and the graveyard of empties that rattles as he kicks a textbook under his bed, condom wrappers caught in mismatched socks and torn out pages of crossed off pamphlets.

 

Joshua doesn’t acknowledge it. He just puts all of Jeonghan’s things in a bag and hugs him when he leaves.

 

“Call me any time,” he says, but Jeonghan gets the feeling it should be him saying the words instead.

 

\--

 

And it goes like this.

 

Seungcheol.

 

He doesn’t know where to start. His visits are always unannounced and though he loathes to admit it, he’s so touch starved he clings onto Seungcheol for dear life, every time they sit on his bed together to binge watch TV until long after the sun has set. Seungcheol will give him silence and give him noise, chattering until he senses the shift in Jeonghan’s mood.

 

“Tell me about my parents,” Jeonghan says. Seungcheol hums. The TV is close to being muted and the voices of the actors are a low murmur barely discernible over the sound of the traffic outside.

 

“What do you want to know,” Seungcheol says.

 

“Anything.”

 

Seungcheol sighs.

 

“I don’t think I could ever do them justice, Jeonghan.”

 

He rolls over and rests his head on Seungcheol’s chest, kicks his feet like a petulant child, silently protesting. Seungcheol sighs in resignation and gives him a shove in the shoulder.

 

“I didn’t know your father very well,” he begins, “he passed when we were much younger, much more naive. But I remember his jokes, his humour. He was a funny man, always laughing no matter what the situation, always able to make people smile. Even when he -” Seungcheol pauses for a second, squeezes Jeonghan. “Even when he began to lose his mind, his humour was the last thing to go.”

 

“What happened,” Jeonghan says. He feels small, adrift in an ocean with no land in sight.

 

“He had a stroke,” Seungcheol says, his voice soft. “A series of them. They just kept taking more and more from him. He lost his speech, his control of his body, he became a shell, and then he became nothing. ” Seungcheol lets out a long breath. “His death changed you. You became quieter. More withdrawn. It’s selfish of me to say, but I almost hope you never remember it.”

 

“It’s okay,” Jeonghan says. He can understand the indulgence.

 

He tries to imagine what his father had sounded like, tries to imagine doing the things kids did with their fathers with him. Riding in bumper cars and fishing in the river, picnics in the park filled with jokes, reconstructions of the photos hung on the study walls.

 

His father in the same hospital bed he had been trapped in, faded into nothing.

 

He shuts his eyes and listens to Seungcheol’s heartbeat.

 

“Tell me about my mother,” he says. Seungcheol wraps an arm around him, spreads his palm open.

 

“Her name was Namjoo,” he sighs, “Lee Namjoo.”

 

Jeonghan has more photos of his mother, as if when his father had passed the two of them had realised how fleeting their memories were and began to preserve them. He doesn’t have to imagine her laugh because he’s heard it, heard her gentle tone of voice and the songs she loved to sing.

 

“She was beautiful,” Seungcheol says, “graceful, soft spoken, not because she was shy but because she was always daydreaming. Always in another world. She built this shop from the ground up and she loved it with all her heart. Your father always used to joke that he wasn’t sure she could love anything more than it until you were born. She weaved stories and when she spoke you always listened, even if it was inane, even if it was simple, because she was just… she was just like that. She’d be very proud of you, Jeonghan. She always was. Both your parents were.”

 

The cuts on his hand sting when he clenches his fist, barely healed wounds stretched to their limit. He doesn’t know how to settle with that thought so he pushes past it, steps through another curtain into darkness.

 

“How did she die,” Jeonghan asks. He’s tiny, a speck of dust on the hospital floor, a single flake of ash from a book with its pages burnt to nothing, cover still intact

 

“She -” Seungcheol starts, coughs. “She just died. They never found the cause of death. She just up and left this world one night, and that was it.”

 

His heart hurts when he hears the words, though he doesn’t understand what they mean. It’s like missing something he’s never known, a type of faux nostalgia that makes his bones ache and his mind yearn.

 

“They were buried together in Gangwon,” Seungcheol continues. “She didn’t want to be apart from him even in death.”

 

Seungcheol’s fingers tighten on his shirt, and there’s nothing but dust left in his mouth. He tries to carve each word into stone and press them into the empty gaps in his mind. They’re beginning to scar over and he can’t let them, afraid if they heal he’ll lose the memories forever.

 

\--

 

Here’s the thing. It goes like _this._

 

Junhui looks at him like he is the only star in the sky. Like the world could fall away and he wouldn’t notice. It scares Jeonghan, in the way someone is afraid they might jump off the edge of a bridge while passing by, or run into traffic with no coherent reasoning.

 

The call of the void.

 

He doesn’t remember anything about him, an inescapable black streak across his memory. Not his dark eyes, not his soft voice, not the silver ring he wears on his index finger in the shape of a feather. His phone is an art gallery in Junhui’s name, full of images hastily snapped. Blowing kisses, with a cocktail in hand, with pale grey lenses, scores of cat ear filters that make his eyes wide and his lips rosy. Some candid, Junhui laughing with his hand on Seungcheol’s shoulder, Junhui staring away across Banpo Bridge, Junhui caught in the low lighting of a ramyun bar in the early hours of the morning, face turned away from the camera.

 

Junhui holds him at arm’s length and as close as possible simultaneously, and it makes Jeonghan’s head dizzy trying to keep up. He wants to fall in love again but he doesn’t know how to, if he even can anymore, like the part of his brain that was damaged also drove a spike through his heart. Junhui is handsome and quick witted, tells jokes that make Jeonghan roar with laughter, sits in the weak winter sunlight and types away at his thesis, glasses pushed up his nose and a cup of tea ever steaming at his side. Sometimes he catches Jeonghan staring and he smiles, something fond and gentle, something he thinks comes to Junhui as easy as breathing. He’s full of love and life and Jeonghan doesn’t know what he did to deserve him, what he did to make Junhui fall in love with him.

 

But he has to start somewhere. He has to try, and he starts with the keys Junhui holds to all the locked doors of his past.

 

\--

 

“Do you ever think about the fact some people will never leave this country?” Junhui says.

 

Snow falls like ash on Incheon, touching the sea and melting away under the muted roars of the plane engines as they clear the harbour. It had seemed a good idea when he’d asked if Junhui had wanted to go to the ocean that morning, the snowflakes a new wonder to him, but now, after he had tasted the dryness in the air and the chill in his gums, he was unsure. They’d caught the train out from Seoul Station, carriages near empty, tramped through the winter haze and caught a bus that took them out over a bridge to the deserted waterfront. The shops were shut up save for a few noodle restaurants, fairground rides abandoned and covered in snow drifts, footprints frosted over. There was a certain novelty about it, he could admit.

 

‘Not because they’re trapped here,” Junhui continues, “but because they don’t want to. Because they’re too scared.”

 

Jeonghan can barely see his face, just his eyes like half moons under his hood, fixated on the ebb and flow of the waves on the docks.

 

“Scared of what?” Jeonghan asks, rubbing his gloved hands together.

 

“Change,” Junhui says. Careful. “Why risk rocking the boat when you could stay comfortable forever?”

 

“Because they want that comfort, I guess?” Jeonghan suggests. He’s unsure where Junhui is leading him, or if he’s really going anywhere at all. Sometimes he goes on tangents, and Jeonghan finds himself a sounding board, just listening until Junhui breaks down and loses his train of thought, the tracks he’s laid too complicated to navigate any longer.

 

“Not even that,” Junhui says, “sometimes you just need to leave a place for no reason other than you can. Humans shouldn’t be predictable. We have all this freedom and we don’t exercise it.”

 

“I don’t follow,” Jeonghan says.

 

“There’s not much to follow,” Junhui admits, but Jeonghan still feels like he’s missing something. There was a signpost somewhere he skipped past, lost in the snowflakes and the muted noon sunlight.

 

“Did I want to travel?” he asks, guessing. Junhui knows him, in ways the others don’t, has held Jeonghan’s secrets inside his heart for so long.

 

“Yes,” Junhui says. He kicks his boots against the ground, something held back.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because this city couldn’t hold you. Nothing could, really.”

 

He pauses, but there’s more words coming, and Jeonghan holds his tongue.

 

“It always scared me.”

 

“I don’t know what that means.”

 

He sounds like a broken record he’s sure, but Junhui is being intentionally obtuse and he knows now the best way to deal with it is to ask. He’s happy to indulge him, unfold his thoughts like a paper maze and show Jeonghan all the hidden meanings inscribed on walls that only he knows about.

 

Junhui laughs, muffled by the fabric of his scarf.

 

“It means that you were like your mother,” he says, “you read books because you always wanted to be somewhere else, and for a long time I was scared I’d lose you to it.”

 

 _Oh_.

 

Jeonghan breathes out, a seed of an idea planted.

 

“But I’m still here,” he says.

 

“In more ways than one, yes.”

 

The silence that follows is dull and strange, almost artificial. Jeonghan feels as if he turns around he’d see a crowd looking in, faces pressed against the glass and cameras pointed their way.

 

There’s nothing, of course, just a few students in puffer jackets and brightly coloured woollen hats hurrying their ways along. The snowflakes pile slowly in the gutters and Junhui’s breath is like cotton candy where it’s exhaled.

 

“There’s never been anywhere else to go but forward,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t know what he means, but he knows it feels right. One day at a time.

 

“And so forward we go,” Junhui agrees, nodding. “Forward and forward. Into the unknown, until there’s nothing more left.”

 

Jeonghan catches snowflakes on his tongue in the pause between, watching Junhui fiddle with his sleeves from the corner of his eyes. Another plane rushes overhead and he spits the ashy taste from his mouth.

 

“Where are you from, again?” he asks, as the sound of the engine fades into the clouds.

 

“Shenzhen.”

 

The word is foreign, but only to Jeonghan.

 

“We should visit.”

 

Junhui twists the cuff of his jacket again.

 

“I’d rather not,” he says.

 

The idea withers. The snow suffocates all the sound around them and Jeonghan can’t help but feel smothered too.

 

\--

 

“I think the band is finally going places,” Seungcheol says, throwing down another set of flyers onto the pile in the middle of the living room table. Jihoon, behind him, shades pushed up into his mess of red hair, snorts with barely concealed amusement.

 

“I finally found someone to replace Chanyeol after he decided to just go to Washington without telling anyone, and Soonyoung reckons he has a drummer who’s better than any of us,” he continues. He runs his hand through his hair and then shakes it back out.

 

“That’s not a tall ask,” Junhui says, coming back from the kitchen with a plate loaded with an assortment of snacks. Jeonghan pinches a piece of kimbap as he passes and munches into it quickly to hide the laugh that bubbles in his throat.

 

“Right, but still. He swears he has talent in spades.”

 

“It’s Soonyoung though,” Junhui remarks. He settles onto the seat beside Jeonghan and nudges his foot against his calf. Jeonghan gives him a smile in return. “Do you think he’s the best judge of anything?”

 

“Soonyoung’s better than you think he is,” Jihoon says, “you shouldn’t underestimate him.”

 

There’s a pause, something awkward and heavy. Jeonghan bumps his knee against Junhui’s but the gesture isn’t returned, Junhui’s focus placed entirely on his platter. The flyers in Seungcheol’s hands get folded one too many times and he has to stop and focus, unfold them again.

 

“You’ve told me that before, and look where that left us,” he says, placing the stack on the table again. “We’re in the same place we’ve always been. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

 

“This _will be_ the change,” Jihoon says. He sounds so sure Jeonghan can’t help but believe him too.

 

\--

 

“What’s up with you and Junhui?” Seungcheol asks. Jeonghan gives a shrug.

 

“You tell me,” he says.

 

The dog asleep beside him snorts in its sleep, ears twitching. Seungcheol gives it a rub on the head and sighs. The cafe is empty save for them, Junhui’s seat temporarily vacated in a bathroom break. The pomeranian he had been cuddling is wandering around Jeonghan’s feet, staring up at him with wide eyes that make him want to dislodge the giant mop of a dog happily resting in his lap.

 

“I don’t know,” Seungcheol says, “that’s why I’m asking you.”

 

“Well I have no clue either,” Jeonghan says, “you all just keep expecting me to know things. Guess what, I fucking don’t.”

 

It comes out rough, frustrated. One of the dogs on the other side of the cafe barks.

 

“Sorry,” Seungcheol says.

 

He hates that word. It’s all he ever hears, apologies for situations that can’t be helped. Sorry your fingers won’t work properly again. Sorry you can’t remember your mother’s name. Sorry Jeonghan, sorry.

 

“Stop apologising. Please.”

 

He doesn’t know how he expected Seungcheol to react, but it’s not this wordless embrace, his arms thrown around his shoulders and his head buried into the crook of Jeonghan’s neck. The dog on Jeonghan’s lap makes a noise of displeasure and he scratches its head with one hand, places the other on Seungcheol’s back and takes a long breath.

 

Junhui returns, smile creasing the corners of his mouth, asks a silent question that Jeonghan answers with a quick shake of his head. The couch dips under his weight and the dog in Jeonghan’s lap seems to find Junhui more interesting, lets out a yawn as it spins around to climb on him and attempt to lick his face. Junhui gives it a kiss on the forehead and ruffles its fur, hugs it tight then reaches out to place his hand on Jeonghan’s arm.

 

“I’m choosing you over hugging the dog,” Junhui says, leans in and rests his head on Jeonghan’s shoulder. His warmth is radiant and Jeonghan shuts his eyes, laughs as he feels a dog lick at his fingers.

 

He wants to make a snarky comment, wants to rib Junhui, but the tease fizzles on his tongue and instead he just murmurs, “Thank you.”

 

\--

 

The Junhui of now smells like archival inks and old paper, like charcoal sketches and coffee cups, sandalwood and honeysuckle that lingers on his fingertips. It means nothing to him. It all means nothing, and his frustration grows deeper with every passing day, sinking him with lead weights tied around his ankles.

 

He can see why he fell in love with Junhui and yet his feelings are little more than a shallow torrent that burns on the surface like an oil fire. Junhui is a million miles deep, a riptide, a typhoon that rages with everything he’d ever do for Jeonghan, move mountains and crush cities if he had to.

 

But Jeonghan would know that from the first glance. He’d know that because Junhui is still here.

 

And so he has to learn anew.

 

“Why are you in Seoul?” Jeonghan asks. A frost coats the ground in remnants of seasons past, and the flowers are quietly beginning to bloom, breaking through the permanence of the chill in the air.

 

Junhui takes a long breath and it blooms too, white fog exhaled like a prayer.

 

“School,” he says.

 

Jeonghan knows that. He’s been to the great campus nestled in the mountains, all dressed in snow, the fountain frozen solid. He can’t even imagine its beauty when the spring begins to roll in, when the grass turns green and the flowerbuds- open up, when colour returns to the world.

 

“But why Seoul?” Jeonghan asks, “Why not China? You’re studying Chinese _and_ Korean linguistics, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Junhui says. “I did my undergraduate in Shenzhen - my home city. I did really well, actually, ended up graduating with honors. I’d sort of been struggling for a while there but things had come back on track. I thought my father would be proud of me, at least, and he was I guess. But on the day, after I’d walked up on that stage with that stupid cap and gown on, just when I was feeling good about myself, at the dinner I had been having with my family, my father had asked me when I was giving him a grandson. Which I guess, in and of itself was an innocuous question. But I was all but out at that point, living in my own glass closet. So I just told him, point blank. You know. Hi Dad, I’m gay.”

 

He does a mock wave and smile.

 

“And so he told me again, like he’d never heard me,” Junhui continues, “that he expected me to give him a grandson. Marry a girl soon, one who was still young and pretty. What am I supposed to do when he does that? I can’t argue. It’s funny how such a little action makes you inhuman in the eyes of the person who raised you. I was still the same person the second before and after I said the words, but not to him. He wanted to pretend like they had never existed.”

 

Jeonghan doesn’t know what to say, so he just takes Junhui’s hand in his and squeezes it. Junhui smiles at him, weak-hearted and faint.

 

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh, “so I started applying to every program I could. Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, even Sydney, Auckland, Los Angeles. Somewhere far away.”

 

“And KU was the only one that accepted you?”

 

“Oh no,” Junhui says, “I got a lot of emails back. One lady in particular in California really, really wanted to work with me. I was excited, you know. That was a long way away, and America had recently passed the uh,” Junhui purses his lips, “federal same-sex marriage bill. I had high hopes.”

 

“But you didn’t,” Jeonghan says. Junhui shakes his head and sighs.

 

“No,” he says, and it sounds so _final_. ”I wanted to with all my heart. But I was still dependent on my parents at the time. My mother said I could go wherever but my father overruled her. He wanted to keep me close. Not somewhere where they allowed,” he pauses, flexes his hand and opens his palm, “my brand of deviancy, I guess.”

 

He takes a long breath and Jeonghan can feel the end of the sentence hanging.

 

“I guess in the end it was good. I met you.”

 

Now the smile, another bloom, unfurling across Junhui’s face and softening the harsh lines of his eyes where they shimmer.

 

“So I’m in Seoul now. And that’s okay.”

 

The silence in the park is cut only by the sharp intake of breath when Jeonghan kisses Junhui, fingers shaking where they touch the edge of his jawline. A few birds scatter from the treetops and Jeonghan shuts his eyes, tastes the coffee on his lips and tries to remember.

 

They part with a soft smack, Junhui’s eyes still shut, his hands gripping the fabric of his coat where it covers his thighs. Jeonghan doesn’t remember anything, he accepts that he doesn’t know, just for now.

 

He can see the I love you on Junhui’s tongue, written across his face like a neon sign, but he lets it be. He kisses it away, he learns, and the flowers wound through his broken bones begin to unfurl.

 

\--

 

The cherry blossom outside the bookshop suddenly blooms on a cold spring night. He wakes to pink flowers like a cluster of stars overhanging his doorway and takes it as a sign, heads to the market and buys a whole box of books without checking the contents.

 

The store owner regards him with a raised eyebrow but he just bounces on the balls of his feet and smiles at him, takes the box under his arm and leaves.

 

There’s a brief feeling of stupidity as he sits on the subway but it fades as he strolls down the footpath parallel to the river’s edge, where the reeds barely stir and magpies peck at the mud. He stacks the novels in a tower, judging each by its cover until he’s chosen his favourite. He picks one for Seungcheol, one for Joshua, and a third for Junhui that he would have kept for himself in other circumstances. The rest of the box he donates, not wanting to add to the clutter that already feels like a maze hiding the minotaur near the back wall of the shop.

 

He keeps the handpicked books under the front desk and then he forgets, waking the next morning to stare in wonderment at the pink petals splashed across the grey brickwork of the adjacent building.

 

“Hey, blossoms,” Junhui says when he pushes open the front door. Mochi almost pounces on Jeonghan’s hair in her effort to catch an old shoelace he’s lazily dangling above her and he laughs, morning sun warm on his chest.

 

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says, “they’re really pretty, aren’t they?”

 

“They’re lovely. You’ve got a big tree outside too, better keep an eye out for petals blown all through the shop soon.”

 

“That’d be nice. Like snow without the cold.”

 

Junhui laughs.

 

“You miss winter?”

 

“I miss how pretty the snow is. I don’t miss the cold,” Jeonghan says. Mochi jumps at him again and he twists the shoelace away, causing her to spin on the spot to chase it. “Do you know some people live where the snow never melts?”

 

He had read a book a few days ago about the cities north of the freeze line, Russian GULAG camps turned into civilisations where the sun rose in strange rhythms and leaving was impossible once the rivers froze over. It sounded alien, like a different planet, and he was still wrapping his head around trying to work out the motivation that lead people to live somewhere so isolated and extreme.

 

“I’ve heard about that. But everyone’s different,” Junhui says. His voice moves and Jeonghan imagines him trailing his hands along the spines of the books as he passes, searching for Jeonghan in his fortress. “Where are you?”

 

“Biographies, I think,” Jeonghan says. Junhui’s footsteps get louder, and then he rounds the corner, ducks under the ladder Jeonghan had left unattended and laughs at the sight of the two of them on the floor.

 

“Giving Mochi a workout?”

 

Jeonghan drops the shoelace and Mochi pounces on it, her bulk crashing into his head as she claws and kicks at it.

 

“She woke me up with her paw in my mouth,” he says. The corner of Junhui’s mouth quirks up and he raises his eyebrows. “I figured I’d run her out of energy and take a nap.”

 

“You know, they say pets take after their owners.”

 

“They’re probably right.” Jeonghan shuts his eyes. “And like a cat, I will now nap,” he says.

 

“Gonna be a short nap. We’re supposed to be meeting Cheol at the art gallery in an hour.”

 

Jeonghan opens an eye. “Are you making fun of me?”

 

“For once, no,” Junhui says. Jeonghan groans and covers his eyes with his hands.

 

When is he going to stop _forgetting_?

 

“I can dial in a rain check if you want,” Junhui offers. Jeonghan shakes his head.

 

“No, don’t.”

 

He can’t keep making excuses. Everything runs away from him like sand in the hourglass and he’s so tired of trying to catch every single grain, remember every detail large and small. It’s exhausting, and it’s something he just has to _do._

 

He gets to his feet. Mochi mews and bunts her head against his ankle.

 

“Let me get changed,” he says, scratching at the sleep crusted in his eyes. “Then we can go.”

 

“We’ll get some coffee on the way there,” Junhui says. Jeonghan nods, winding up the spiral staircase to his home, Mochi and Junhui on his heel, Junhui cooing as he scratches her ear.

 

There must be a breaking point, and he wonders if Junhui’s love will be enough when he reaches it. He opens his planner and scribbles his name in the margin, writes down “Gallery, Seungcheol and Jun” on today’s date and throws it on his bed.

 

He’s not going to let it ruin today. He makes that promise to himself, and when he leaves his room and sees Junhui holding Mochi, his lips pressed into her fur as he showers her with kisses, he knows he’s going to keep it.

 

\--

 

“We’re holding an event in a few weeks. A winter bash.”

 

“We?”

 

“Oh,” Junhui laughs. “Right. The International Student Union at KU. Josh and I are on the committee.”

 

Of course. Right. He knew they both went to the same university. It would be an easy conclusion to draw they would both be in the ISU. But an event? A meetup? _A party?_

 

“Right,” he says, hesitant.

 

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

 

“No, I. I want to. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

 

“A long while.”

 

\--

 

He sits on the countertop and watches Junhui talk for a while, the way his eyes light up, the way the words seem to sit so perfectly on his tongue. His Korean is precise and careful but his Chinese seems more casual, almost flirty. The girl he’s talking to laughs and Jeonghan feels something new, something that jams his throat and makes everything stop working for a second, white hot where it burns through him.

 

“You alright there?”

 

His eyes snap into focus and it takes him a second to realise the words are directed at him.

 

“Huh?” is all that comes out of his mouth, bewildered.

 

She says something to him in Chinese and his eyes go wide and he shakes his head.

 

“I don’t speak Chinese, sorry.”

 

“Ah,” she nods her head, switches languages again, “I did think you looked Korean.”

 

“Sorry,” he smiles, sheepish. “I was kinda lost in thought.”

 

“It’s fine, I’m a bit prone to daydreaming myself,” she says, smiling back at him as she takes a sip of her crimson coloured drink. The umbrella leaning on the edge is frayed a little, a tear running through one of the blue webs. “My friends decided to fuck off to find some of our classmates and left me behind as their ticket back in here.”

 

She snorts out a laugh and raises her eyebrows. “What can you do though? What’s up with you, eh? Why’re you here alone?”

 

“I heard there was free food,” Jeonghan answers. Junhui leans against the wall and swirls his bottle in his hand and Jeonghan follows the motion of his wrist, studies the way his fingers curl around the glass.

 

“Every university student’s favourite,” she agrees, “I’m Mimi, by the way.”

 

“Jeonghan,” he offers. She smiles at him, her eyes disappearing with the force of it, and drags a stool across the floor.  

 

“Nice to meet you,” she says, and jumps up onto the seat, crossing her legs at the ankles. There’s a tattoo peeking out from the edge of the ripped bottoms of her shorts and closer up Jeonghan can see the light of a silver stud shining in her nose.

 

“So, where are you from?” She asks.

 

“Seoul,” Jeonghan says, laughing at little.

 

“Real?” She cocks an eyebrow, attention focused.

 

“Born and raised.”

 

“Not an international student then, I guess.”

 

“You’d guess right. Got some friends who are, though.”

 

“Good shit,” she laughs. “I’m from Jeju. Not really one either, to be honest.”

 

Jeonghan smiles, nods.

 

He doesn’t know where that is.

 

“My father’s Korean and my mum’s Chinese,” she continues, “so I got the best of both worlds, I guess. Or worst, maybe, considering I ran away to Seoul the second I got the chance.”

 

She pauses and takes a long drink.

 

“It wasn’t good being in a small community like that. Everyone knows everyone. Couldn’t do a single thing without the aunties at the store down the road telling me about it. Christ, it was suffocating. Not like Seoul, right? No-one here cares who I am. It’s liberating.”

 

Mimi smiles at him, and he barely has a mind to return it.

 

“It must be,” he says.

 

Junhui slides up beside him and puts his hand on his waist, casual as can be. “Hey you two,” he says. “Conspiring against me?”

 

Mimi’s eyes go to Junhui’s hand, then to Jeonghan, and she shrugs.

 

“We were getting to that.”

 

“Well, if you’re gonna kill me,” Junhui laughs, “at least make it in a blaze of glory.”

 

“Are you suggesting immolation?” Jeonghan says.

 

“I’m already the hottest guy in the room, that might be a bit too far.”

 

Junhui’s hand squeezes his waist and Mimi’s lip curls.

 

“Says you,” she says.

 

“I’ll have you know I surveyed at least three people and the results were 100% in my favour.”

 

“Whatever, Junhui.”

 

Jeonghan watches the exchange curiously. Junhui seems relaxed but something seems to have flipped a switch in Mimi, all her cheer drained like the last of her drink as she upends the cup.

 

“I’m gonna get another drink and find out where the fuck Minghao went. Catch you, Jeonghan.”

 

She waves to him and he feels awkward as he returns it, Junhui not even receiving so much as a glance when she shoves past him towards the front door. Junhui chuckles and offers him one of the bottles in his hands.

 

“Want something to drink?” he asks, “it’s peach soju. Pretty sweet. You liked sweet stuff.”

 

“I’ll give it a try,” Jeonghan says, taking the drink from him and resting it on the counter. He indicates towards where Mimi had made her less than polite exit. “You two not get along?”

 

Junhui laughs.

 

“Nah, barely know her,” he says. He pauses to take a sip of his drink. “But I know you, on the other hand. And she was flirting with you.”

 

“What?” Jeonghan sputters as he unscrews the cap, almost dropping it in disbelief. “Why?”

 

Junhui takes the bottle from him, touch lingering and warm, and hands it back opened. He chuckles.

 

“You’re pretty handsome, Jeonghan.” He brushes a few strands of Jeonghan’s hair from his forehead in a practiced motion. “Guess she saw you here alone and thought she’d take the chance.”

 

“So she was being hostile to you because you’re... competition?” Jeonghan asks. The scent of the drink is cloying and almost makes him cough, like a spritz of cheap perfume directed up his nostrils. He takes an experimental sip and finds it’s not as bad as it smells, a lingering aftertastes he assumes must be alcohol almost masked by the peach.

 

“Yep,” Junhui laughs, “of course, she saw me and thought ‘how am I supposed to compete with that handsome guy?’ ”

 

Jeonghan narrows his eyes in disbelief.

 

“You’re full of it,” he says. He takes another drink, almost a whole mouthful straight down the hatch. Junhui smiles wider.

 

“I could be. You’ll never know. How’s the drink taste?”

 

“Tolerable,” Jeonghan answers, which is about as much as he can say. He doesn’t really have a reference point.

 

“Better than rocket fuel?”

 

“I’ll manage.”

 

Someone turns the music up and the vocals become discernible, no longer diluted by the heavy bass line. The girl rapping has a distinct tone and Junhui shuffles his feet along to the song, mouthing the lyrics silently.

 

“You want me to leave you alone?” Junhui says as the song winds down. “Or you okay if we just hang out? Shua is almost here, I think.”

 

“Stay,” he says. If Junhui leaves he knows he’ll be left in a corner by himself, nursing his drink and fiddling with his phone, wondering if all the people who passed him had told their life story already, if they’d crossed paths before and he’d have to fumble with trying to pretend he understood the parts of their hearts he’d forgotten.

 

\--

 

He can’t shake Mimi from his mind, or the way she’d looked at him, coy and dark eyed, something tempting that made his stomach warm and his fingers tingle. It was new. It was consuming, and Jeonghan wished to follow it without thought, take its hand and run wherever it would lead him.

 

Summer has almost come and the nights are heavy, warm winds and chatter, footpaths crowded with vendors and students trying to pretend exams aren’t looming heavy over their heads. He stuffs two 50000 won bills into the waistband of his jeans and drinks a bottle of soju before he leaves, making sure to leave his bedroom window cracked for Mochi to come back inside.

 

It leads him down the steps, out the door and down the hill, into the night, into the streets of Hongdae _._ The hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he feels strangely whole amongst the noise. He stops and purchases a ring from a lady set up beside the main road, a black band with a houndstooth pattern around the edge, slips it onto his right index finger. The bar cover is 25000 and he begins to think maybe he brought too much money with him, but then he’s hit by a wall of _noise_ , bass that shakes his bones, shouts and laughter, the heat of hundreds crammed into the tiny underground club. Lights flash in reds and greens, illuminating the mass of bodies moving on the floor. He takes a deep breath, his heartbeat indiscernible compared to the tinny electronic drumline. A group of girls looks him up and down when he passes their table and he feels that temptation flare within him again, something that burns hot.

 

The girl who catches his eye, the girl that walks over to him and slides a seat right beside his, asks for whatever he’s having and places her hand on the bar beside him. She’s pretty, short hair dyed blonde, eyes sharp under the monochromatic lights. She moves with a surprising grace and talks with a boisterous voice, the end of her shorts cut off and her shirt baggy, her pronounced cupid’s bow almost disappearing when she flashes him smiles.

 

He leaves with her. Of course he does. They ascend the stairs, her grip on his arm tight, squeeze through the crowds outside.

 

“We can walk back to mine,” she says. Jeonghan nods numbly. The streetlights are _loud_ , louder than the sounds of partying, louder than the beat of his heart in ears. They weave down the hill, through back alleys adorned with fairy lights and crowded bars, out onto the main road. A taxi rushes past and sprays rainwater across the footpath in front of them and the girl shrieks, falls against Jeonghan and starts to laugh.

 

“Sorry, that gave me a fright.”

 

He gives her a squeeze and lets go of her. “It’s fine.”

 

(It probably isn’t.)

 

She keeps pace with him now, hand brushing against his occasionally, sneaking looks at him to smile with that burn in her eyes, the match to the dried tinder packed around his lungs.

 

He stops. She walks a few more steps before she realises, looks back at him confused.

 

“You alright?” she asks. Jeonghan pauses, a word trapped in his throat, choking him, someone stuck at the intersection leaning on their horn when a moped runs the red light.

 

“Go home,” he says. She tilts her head in question. He repeats himself. “Go home.”

 

The lights blur around him and he can’t do this. He can’t. There’s a worry in his stomach that makes him feel like he’s about to throw up. He needs to sit down, he needs to go home, bury himself beneath his sheets and kiss Mochi on the nose.

 

“Excuse me?” she says. She’s still stopped on the spot and Jeonghan is glad for it, glad he can’t see her face up close. “Why are you talking to me like I’m a dog?” she asks.

 

Jeonghan covers his face with his hands, trying to stop the perpetual spinning that seems to be happening somewhere behind his right ear.

 

“I’m not,” he says. “I just-”

 

He hesitates and she glares at him.

 

“Then what do you want?” She asks. “Go home, huh? That’s what you want?”

 

“I don’t know,” he answers, his sentence trailing into nothingness. Far off, somewhere over the mountains, thunder ripples through the skies.

 

She shakes her head, disappointed. Her heels clatter against the footpath as she stomps past him and he just watches her go, her hair barely shifting when a gust of hot wind barrels down the street. When she reaches the corner she turns back to look at him, one last time, the red glow of the traffic lights harsh on her face.

 

It’s only then that he realises just how much she looks like Junhui.

 

The recognition sobers him, and when he looks up he realises he’s lost, realises he’s alone, that they’ve strayed far from the nightlife and he has no clue of his path back to safety.

 

He sticks his hand out, hails the next taxi with his heart pounding in his chest. The driver winds down his window and leans towards him and Jeonghan has to force himself to blink, or he thinks he’ll start seeing Junhui in everyone.

 

“Where are you going?” the driver asks.

 

“Take me home,” Jeonghan says, The driver stares at him blankly. Moisture swells in the air and starts to prick against the back of his neck, sweat that beads in anticipation of the rain.

 

“Address?”

 

“Home,” he repeats, “it’s a bookshop. On a hill. It’s near the high school. There’s a big blossom tree outside and a park and-”

 

He stops.

 

“I need an address,” the driver asks again, impatient. “A neighbourhood.”

 

The pause seems to stretch on forever, seems to bring everything to a standstill. Raindrops shine in the neon lights of a love motel on the road opposite and Jeonghan shakes his head, shuts his eyes.

 

“I don’t know,” he says.

 

“You drunk? How do you not know where you live?”

 

Jeonghan steps away from the curb. The first wave of rain falls in a sheet, knocked sideways like the ebb and flow of the tides. Water sprays from under the tyres of the car as it leaves and Jeonghan stands dumbfounded, dizzy. A rising nausea rises forces him to sit and he holds his head in his hands as the skies open up, as thunder cracks and lightning flashes, the heavens themselves scolding him for his actions.

 

At least the water is cool. It runs in rivulets down his arms, through the rips in his jeans and pools in his shoes. It cascades to the pavement when he lifts his hand, phone balanced between his fingertips and Junhui’s name lit up on the screen.

 

\--

 

His t-shirt is dry enough that he doesn’t have to remove it, just peels his sopping jeans and jacket off, throws them in the backseat of Junhui’s car and wraps himself in the towel he’d been provided.

 

“Caught out?” Junhui says. He smiles at Jeonghan but it’s fragile, barely reaching his eyes, the same look of heartbreak he’d been forced to learn so quickly.

 

“I had a change of heart,” Jeonghan says. A drop of rainwater falls from his nose. “Or my heart was never in it, I don’t know. I couldn’t even remember where I live.”

 

He says the last part softer, ashamed, eyes fixed on the gravel scars that criss-cross his palm.

 

“Yeah,” Junhui says, matches his quieter tone, “it’s alright, Jeonghan. I’m glad you called me.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Jeonghan says. Now he’s the one apologising.

 

“Don’t be,” Junhui says, “I’m happy you’re safe. Happy you trust me. There’s nothing to apologise for,” he hesitates, “though it does - it does hurt, I guess.”

 

Jeonghan bites his lip. The car comes to a stop at an intersection and he can feel Junhui’s eyes on him. He thinks he owes him at least to meet them, but he’s a coward, too afraid of what he’d see. Afraid that Junhui might still forgive him, after all of this.

 

“I don’t even know if I have a right to feel that way,” Junhui finishes. The lights change from red to green and Junhui’s hand brushes against his, a deliberate action before he shifts gear.

 

“What are we doing?” Junhui asks. Jeonghan’s not even sure if it’s addressed to him, but he answers anyway. This has been a long time coming, the two of them stuck in some in-between since he had first kissed Junhui in the park.

 

“I’m just trying to understand,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t know, truthfully, but that’s the result of his unwillingness to learn. He’s spent so long with his head in the sand that it’s habitual by now.

 

“Yeah,” Junhui says, “me too.”

 

Traffic is light and they glide onto the freeway, merging easily with the other fireflies running along the riverbank. Jeonghan blots a few drops of water from his face.

 

“Everyone doesn’t realise how much they just expect me to _know_ ,” Jeonghan says, “you all take a lot for granted, like how nice must it be to have someone greet you by name and have even an inkling of who they are. Knowing what the little things you find scattered around the house are. I don’t even know how to love again. Or what it even felt like in the first place.”

 

“Ah,” Junhui says. Just that.

 

‘Ah’.

 

The city blurs into a bright streak and Jeonghan feels exhausted, everything weighing down on him. When he closes his eyes he sees flashes of light behind his eyelids, pinks and blues and yellows, Alice’s rainbow as she slipped into wonderland.

 

“You can learn,” Junhui says, as they’re pulling into the pedestrian road that leads to the hill where the bookshop is. “I’ll wait.”

 

\--

 

The summer comes.

 

Jeonghan hires someone to look after the bookshop, someone to give him free time, a kid (he’s a not kid, Jeonghan, he’s my age, do you think I’m a child?) fresh off his military service with doe eyes and a harem of friends that seems to encompass half of Seoul.

 

Taeyong naps in the chair behind the counter (like he did) picks random books from the shelf (like he did) and takes a quick liking to Mochi, who more than once greets Jeonghan with a sleepy meow from his lap ( _she just jumps up there and sleeps_ ).

 

“You okay with everything?” Jeonghan asks, watching him toil with stacking books on the back shelf, near the corner where all the spiders seem to nest.

 

“Yeah,” Taeyong says, “it’s fine. There’s less work than I thought there’d be.”

 

“Don’t say that or I’ll pay you less,” Jeonghan teases. Taeyong looks mortified for a second, pausing with one foot up on the stepstool and his arms filled with books. Jeonghan laughs. “I’m kidding. Glad to hear it’s not too much for you.”

 

“Oh, no,” Taeyong nods, “of course. Thank you.” He pushes a heavy compendium into place on the top shelf. “Enjoy your holiday,” he says.

 

The summer comes, and Jeonghan runs away.

 

The stones in the center of the table glow hot and the smell of cooked meat wafts through the air. Jeonghan pulls the tickets from his pocket and spreads them in a fan, holds them out.

 

“Stockholm?” Seungcheol says. “Sweden. You bought us tickets to Sweden.”

 

Fat drips from the meat, cracks and hisses against the stone. Junhui turns it over with the tongs.

 

“Why?” Seungcheol continues.

 

“Why not?”

 

His heart jumps a beat as he says it and Junhui gives him a strange look, his eyes curious. Someone laughs in the back of the restaurant, raucous and drunken, and Seungcheol picks up the bottle to pour everyone another round.

 

“I guess we’re going to Europe.”

 

\--

 

The day is balmy when they touch down, the sky a faded blue and streaked with white puffy clouds like smoke from the end of a cigarette. Junhui wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and yawns, leaning on Jeonghan’s shoulder for support as they stand beside the baggage claim. No-one bats an eyelid. No-one cares.

 

Their airbnb is near the shore, an old house with a bright red door and paint the colour of ocean waves peeling from the weatherboards. The afternoon sun shines strong through the bay windows and when he opens the catch the smell of the sea floods through, salty and fresh. He drops his bags on the floor and immediately climbs onto the cushions, leans his elbows on the windowsill and stares out.

 

“What time is it in Seoul?” Jeonghan asks. The sunlight catches on the rippling wakes left behind by boats drifting in the harbour and he inhales, lets his eyes half close and feels the warmth on his skin.

 

“It’s around nine,” Junhui answers. “We’re seven hours behind.”

 

“That’s gonna take some getting used to,” Jeonghan says. His eyes don’t want to open and he has to force them, sleep curling around him.

 

“Tired?” Junhui asks.

 

“We can’t all sleep on the plane like you.”

 

The seat dips and Junhui’s arms come to rest on the white painted window frame beside his. Their shoulders bump together and Junhui takes a long breath.

 

“Where do we go first?” He asks. There’s a slam of a cupboard downstairs and the sound of laughter. Jeonghan smiles. Outside the window a dog barks and someone far off is playing an accordion, the sound carried on the breeze.

 

“Anywhere we want.”

 

\--

 

Jeonghan drinks again and finds his tolerance is poor, that he’s warm and fuzzy before Junhui even starts to giggle. He pokes him in the ribs and receives an elbow in return, the two of them play fighting like children, knocking ankles and kicking at each other’s legs.

 

Seungcheol makes up for both of them where he sits at the head of the table, bottles scattered around him like tribute to a king. The alcohol makes him loose and pliant and he hangs off whoever is nearest to him, laughs a little louder, smiles a little wider. Joshua grins at him like he’s the only thing that matters and it makes Jeonghan’s heart warm, the way Seungcheol interrupts the conversation to place his hand over Jeonghan’s and tell him he loves him.

 

They stumble back to their Airbnb and Jeonghan practically has to carry Junhui up the stairs, teach his feet how to take them one at time. They lie together under the open window, tangled in each other, Junhui’s chin hooked over his shoulder and his arms loose across his chest. The waves lap at the edge of the harbour and Jeonghan is content to watch, to try to match the draw of his breath with the muted splash of the water.

 

A clatter from downstairs, a door opening and closing and Seungcheol’s low voice like the rumble of thunder on the horizon. He laughs, loud, and Joshua laughs with him.

 

“I feel warm,” Jeonghan says. The breeze scatters his hair and Junhui squeezes him softly.

 

“How much did you have to drink?”

 

“How much did _you_ have to drink?”

 

“I asked first,” Junhui says, prodding him.

 

“Less than you.”

 

“I didn’t peg you for a liar, Yoon Jeonghan.”

 

“Who had to carry who up the stairs again?” Jeonghan says. That shuts him up, brings a lull only filled by the drunken laughter from the street outside and the sound of their breath. Junhui’s weight shifts and Jeonghan has to shake him awake, guide him to his bed and help him take off his socks, his jeans, stumble to the ensuite and pour him a glass of water.

 

“You sure you’re not gonna throw up?” he says, placing the glass on his bedside table. Junhui grunts.

 

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m just a sleepy drunk. Sleepy, sleepy.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“Good night, Hannie,” Junhui says. The nickname barely gets used, but Junhui says it with such a fondness that he can’t help but feel his heart swell, something barely contained within.

 

“Goodnight.”

 

“Love you.”

 

“Love you too, idiot.”

 

Jeonghan sits on the edge of his own bed, watching the dim shape of Junhui’s body, the rise and fall of his chest slowing as sleep takes him over. There’s a strange feeling in his stomach that he can’t dissect, and though he holds onto it as he curls under the sheets, it’s all but forgotten when the morning comes.

 

\--

 

The next morning is hot and clear, skies blue and air still. Seungcheol is stuck hungover in bed and so they depart one short, out to the markets, wallets stuffed with krona and floppy hats on their heads.

 

Junhui’s stomach seems endless, his goal apparently to sample every kind of food they come across. Where miming doesn’t cut it he gets Joshua to translate, and when Joshua wanders off to bury his nose in a tea stall he resorts to English that surprises Jeonghan with it’s fluency. He feeds Jeonghan pieces of everything he buys and asks him what he thinks, does the same when Joshua comes back and compares their opinions.

 

They have Chinese for lunch, spicy Sichuan soups that sear his lips when he underestimates the amount of heat the pepper sauce packs. Joshua laughs at him over his fried noodles, but when he leaves to use the bathroom Junhui eggs Jeonghan into mixing the fiery spice into Joshua’s condiments. He’s barely able to hold his giggles as Joshua comes back to his seat, even more so when the first thing he does is pick up a fried dumpling to dip in his sauce. Jeonghan takes a sip of his soup to keep his mouth shut, but he ends up almost spitting it everywhere when Joshua’s entire face starts to rapidly turn red.

 

It’s enough to tip him off as the culprit.

 

“I’m gonna get you for that,” Joshua says, spinning his tray away and flagging down a waiter for a new dish of sauce. After the spice laced one is taken away he kicks Jeonghan under the table and Jeonghan kicks him back, the two of them silently fighting until the waiter returns and they’re forced to behave like two squabbling siblings.

 

He’s pretty sure his shins are going to be bruised the next day, but after watching Joshua dab the sweat from his brow repeatedly, he thinks it’s a fair price to pay.

 

“Didn’t know you couldn’t handle your spice,” Jeonghan says, as they step back out into the sunshine.

 

“Spicy food is okay,” Joshua replies, “Jun just has you trained up. That was volcanic.”

 

“Trained up?”

 

“He’s had you eating that kind of food since you met. You should be used to losing your taste buds now.”

 

“Huh,” Jeonghan says. His mouth does feel numb, his lips tingling slightly, but he wouldn’t say it had burned. There’s certainly no red tinge to his cheeks, not like Joshua. The kick had been pleasant, biting, enough that the flavours had come through even thicker, the spices in the broth rich and tangy.

 

Junhui joins them, the last to pay the bill and caught up in conversation with the girl working the cash register.

 

“She was from Shenzhen too,” he says, smiling. “She said if we want to go the cathedral we should do it now, it gets crowded in the late afternoon.”

 

Their plan had been the palace first, then the cathedral afterwards, but there was nothing set in stone, truly. He glances at Joshua, who shrugs.

 

“We could go to the cathedral and meet Seungcheol at the palace afterwards?,” he suggests. “He had been talking about wanting to see it.”

 

“That works,” Jeonghan says.

 

They get distracted, somewhere in the back streets and trinket stands, where Junhui stops to pet every dog that runs up to him, chat to every stall owner that will talk to him, buy cream doughnuts so fresh Jeonghan wants to search the back of the cart for a cow producing the milk. He gets cream on the tip of his nose and when Junhui wipes it off Joshua rolls his eyes so hard they look like they’ll fall out of his head.

 

“You two are awful,” he says.

 

Jeonghan takes a fingerful of cream and smears it down Joshua’s cheek in retaliation, stuffs the rest of his doughnut in his mouth and makes a run for it across the square. He makes two loops around the fountain before he finds Junhui again, sitting on the edge with what appears to be some kind of hotdog in his hand. He offers it to Jeonghan when he sits down beside him, and upon his refusal takes a monstrous bite out of it, grease running down his lip.

 

“That was disgusting,” Jeonghan says. Junhui grins, looking like a hamster with his cheeks still full of food. Joshua catches up to them, takes the other part of the hotdog when it’s offered to him and puts the entire thing into his mouth.

 

“You’re both disgusting,” Jeonghan amends.

 

Joshua smiles sweetly, and dips his hands in the fountain water to wash the grease from them.

 

“We just know the proper procedure to eating good food,” Junhui says. Jeonghan turns to face him and realises his mistake as soon as he does so, as soon as he feels the icy touch of Joshua’s hands on the back of his neck

 

“You’re the awful one,” Jeonghan decides, squirming away from Joshua’s touch as he tries to smear as much water across his back as he can. Joshua grins and flicks the last few drops of water towards him.

 

“Let's say we're all awful, otherwise we'd never get along,” Junhui says.

 

Jeonghan thinks that, well, he can agree with that.

 

\--

 

The sunshine peaks when they reach the countryside, amongst daisy fields and rolling hills, unmarked roads and sheep grazing on the emerald grass. Jeonghan winds down the window and lets the wind whip his hair across his face, breathes in the pristine mountain air.

 

They pull into a rest stop, a cafe with an attached gift shop that’s empty except for them and the owners. The coffee they’re served is slightly bitter but he can forgive them on account of the incredible view, the mountains cutting clean through the cerulean skies, splashed with flower vines winding through the trees in colours like a painting he thought he’d only see hanging in an art gallery.

 

“This is paradise,” Seungcheol says, standing ankle deep in the grass outside. Jeonghan sits with his legs dangling off the deck and shuts his eyes, lets the sun warm his face, humming a tune he isn’t even sure he really knows. It’s idyllic, it’s free, and just this time he can pretend nothing is wrong. Just this time.

 

The swimming spot is larger than he expected, through a closed in forest track that forks again and again, the natural pooling location of a lazy river that cuts through the rolling valleys. Jeonghan sits on the end of the dock and watches them all dip their feet into the pristine blue water, hang their clothes on the branches of the trees overhanging the bank and jump in head first after affirming the depth was giving enough.

 

Seungcheol is the first of them to go in, fearless as he strips down naked (laughter warm) and does a dive off a basalt outcrop that sits over the lip. He does a few circles of backstroke, dives under and comes back up, shaking his hair from his eyes even though it will just fall back again.

 

“It’s not as cold as it feels,” he says.

 

Junhui dives in with a bellowing shout, the spout of water he sends up scattering like paint splatters against the rocks.

 

“I’m a bit worried we have a polar bear in our midst,” he says when he surfaces, paddling over to where Seungcheol is tip-toeing on the bank. “This is _freezing_.”

 

Seungcheol laughs, his smile wide and gummy. “I think you’re just weak.”

 

None of them had bought a change of clothes, and while Joshua is loathe to strip as Junhui and Seungcheol had, eventually it’s just Jeonghan sitting on the dock, watching the three of them splash at each other and paddle in the water. Junhui swims over and hangs off the ladder while he talks to him, trying to coax him to jump in, but Jeonghan refuses time and time again. The scars that cut across his skin are barely healed and he’s sure none of them know just the extent of how bad they are, how his chest is covered in angry red welts and lines, reminders he has to face every time he looks in the mirror.

 

He doesn’t swim. He just watches, pokes fun at Seungcheol when he misses a forward flip trying to dive in, feels the lap of the water at his feet. Each of them tries to convince him in turn, but Jeonghan is unmoving, even when they tell him he doesn’t have to strip, that he can jump in fully clothed if he wants. Joshua pushes Seungcheol under, and when he surfaces he spits a stream of water back into his face, tries to do the same to him but gets overpowered, screaming with laughter when he gets shoved back into the lake once more.

 

In the end the heat rises high, trapped in the still air, and Jeonghan succumbs. Junhui lets out a cheer when he stands on the edge of the rock and prepares to jump. The ground is gritty beneath his feet, and he holds his breath and dives, tries not to open his mouth in shock when he hits the frigid water. It surrounds his body, sticks to him as his clothes do, makes his bones ache and his heart slow, feels like a slap to the face where it stings his cheeks.

 

It makes him feel alive.

 

Above the surface he sucks in a long breath, shakes the hair from his eyes and leans onto his back, shirt drifting from his back as he floats. The peace lasts for approximately five seconds before he’s disturbed, dunked in droplets when Joshua crashes into the water beside him and comes up with a wicked smile on his face.

 

“Glad you could join us,” he says.

 

Junhui is the last to climb out of the water, doing so as the sun begins to fall. He sits down beside Jeonghan, pushes his hair back and picks up his camera from under his towel. They’re polar opposites, Junhui nude and dripping wet, Jeonghan wearing Seungcheol’s shirt and only missing his shoes, but even so there’s little effort required when Jeonghan finds it in himself to smile.

 

He kisses him, soft and chase, and Junhui tastes like summer rain.

 

\--

 

A cascading passage of time, mundane routines he hates to settle into. Junhui’s body in his bed becomes familiar, and the nights without him in turn feel emptier, this house too big for just him and Mochi. He paces the walls of books and waits for the trees to turn orange, clog up his gutters with leaves and chip away at his hope that this will one day cease. That he will ever truly return home.

 

He turns 27 on paper, and one in his head, the first birthday he remembers celebrated a year and a week after he lost his memory. Chuseok comes and passes and he forgets where his neurologist’s office is, takes out his frustration on her and spits venom for days on end. Junhui sends him photos of the dog his supervisor had brought into work and he affords a smile, sat alone amongst someone else's ink-bound memories.

 

He hates this fucking shop. The air is stagnant and though it had been everything his mother had loved, those moments had been washed away, cleared from his mind no matter how hard he tried to find them again. They could tell him over and over, but it would never fix it, fix the feeling of watching his friends float on by the path of life from his little dusty island that everyone told him he was supposed to love.

 

“Taeyong?”

 

The other end of the line is fuzzy. “Jeonghan? Hello. How are you?”

 

“Well,” Jeonghan says. “Can you spare some time to work in a couple of weeks?”

 

Someone laughs in the background, the sound so loud it causes the static from the speaker to jump.

 

“I can't. I'm out of Seoul, and I don't really know when I'll be back,” Taeyong says. “I'm sorry.”

 

“It's alright,” Jeonghan says. “Where are you?”

 

“Right now? Thailand, but I'm going to Vietnam soon, I think. Not really sure at the moment, just taking it as it goes.”

 

The background noise increases and Taeyong apologises again. “I think I have to go,” he says, “but I hope you can find someone!”

 

He hangs up and sits in the big chair under the window, staring at the condensation formed on the pane, the conversation playing over and over in his head. Taeyong hadn’t even been sure where he had been going, but he was just doing it anyway.

 

He had escaped the city, with no return in sight. A new beginning.

 

Jeonghan touches the scar that runs parallel to his rib, and he thinks he knows where he needs to go.

 

\--

 

The dream that comes to him is fitful and burning, something that seems to stick to his skin like a film. He dreams of tawny wings that carry him through a sky blue as oceans, of the burning radiance of a dying star. He dreams he flies too close to the sun, and everything comes tumbling down.

 

\--

 

_What if he never remembers me?_

 

_He loves you, Junhui._

 

_He doesn’t even know me._

 

\--

 

And then:

 

Snow.

 

Jeonghan pulls the curtains aside and the street outside is dark, skies grey, the lights of the streetlamps a dull golden smudge amongst the snowflakes falling soft as ashes. The slope of the hill is sharp and the houses seem built into it, walls crumbling with rusted spikes and gates carved with steel patterns. The window fogs under his breath and he wipes it away absentmindedly with his palm, hissing at the cold of the glass.

 

This is Gangwon, of course. He left Seoul two days ago, left behind Mochi and the bookshop and all his friends. To the lonely hillside over the ocean where his parents sleep beneath this dirt. He had placed violets and peonies and white roses upon his mother’s grave, black orchids for his father, lit incense and sat in the salty wind for hours.

 

The sheets rustle and Junhui’s arm stretches out across the shape of Jeonghan’s body left behind, fingers opening and closing.

 

Junhui, yes, he had been there too. Silent, hand twined with Jeonghan’s. It asks him now to come back to bed but Jeonghan doesn’t, though it’s too early, barely past six.

 

It feels like a dollhouse outside, the heat rising through the floor, everything silent and carefully placed. They never used the house and he still finds dust in unexpected places, cat pawprints years old from the stray that Jeonghan used to let in through the bathroom window.

 

He pulls on his boots, his jacket from where he’d thrown it on the table

 

He slides open the front door and stumbles out onto the porch. The light flicks on automatically and it’s like the world freezes for a second, illuminated by a camera flash, snowflakes suspended in the air.

 

First the silence hits him. There are no voices on the sidewalk, no traffic far off and beyond. Even the ocean is muted, suffocated by the snow that piles up pristine across the ground. It’s quiet here, quiet in his head, in the grey light of the morning. The tinnitus of anxiety has been quelled, and he feels okay.

 

His boots break the frozen grass, one, two, crunch, crunch, compacted under his heel. He draws his scarf around his neck and follows the light of his phone torch, leading him down the hillside curve of the road. The air is a sharp chill and Jeonghan feels alive, he feels alive where the snowflakes fall on his lips, as the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore grows louder.

 

Snow, coating everything. His boots sink into the ground as he crosses the road, bending blades of grass trying valiantly to keep their heads above the blanket of snow smothering them.

 

He sits, finds a log washed up and burnt out, brushes the snowflakes from its bark and watches the light begin to filter through, the sun parting the clouds as if they are curtains blocking the window of the Earth. The only sound is the waves where they thrum against the beachfront, the gulls still asleep on the streetlamps.

 

Somewhere, the snowfall stops.

 

“Jeonghan!”

 

It takes him a second to recognise his own name, a second for him to be dragged out of his head. His ears ache from the cold and he turns, sees Junhui running across the road, breath turning into fog where it catches in the golden light.

 

“Jeonghan,” he says, panting, cheeks red, eyes puffy. “Holy shit.”

 

It’s muffled, distant, even though he’s right beside him. He turns back to the ocean and sighs. The sun has begun to crest the waves, a half coin of deep gold, heat weak and thin.

 

“You scared the life out of me,” Junhui says, taking the last few steps across the sand. “I woke up and you were missing and I just thought...”

 

Jeonghan shuts his eyes and tries to force all the thoughts out of his cluttered mind.

 

“What did you think?” he asks.

 

“I thought you’d forgotten,” Junhui hesitates, “I thought you’d had enough. I thought you were giving up. I woke up and you were gone, Jeonghan.”

 

“No, I’m still here,” Jeonghan says, though he’s not sure if it’s true. A wave crashes into the shore and swallows a mouthful of snow with its lip. He feels hazy, like the edges of his being have become blurred, like he’s becoming a ghost. Maybe he passed in his sleep and this is his limbo, where he waits for the reaper to lead him home.

 

“Still here,” Junhui repeats.

 

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says. The sun suddenly burns and he almost feels like he could reach out, open his palm and capture it, keep it with him for when the days seem cold and dull.

 

But that would be selfish, he knows, to steal the sun’s light for himself.

 

But then again, why can’t he have something for himself? Why should this world take and take and never give him anything of his own? It took his family, his memory, his youth and all the joy from his mouth, his body and soul, crushed and spat back out in horrible approximations of what he had once been. He wants to be a better person, he wants to be the person everyone seems to see in him, but maybe he was always meant to be like this, barely good enough for himself let alone those who made the foolish mistake to love him.

 

Maybe he deserves to have a little bit of the light for his selfish soul. Maybe he’s allowed to be human just this once.

 

“Jeonghan,” Junhui says, reaches out to touch his cheek with bare hands warm and familiar. He closes his eyes and leans into it without thought, the comfort something that settles in his bones, something that feels radiant where it spreads through his veins.

 

No, Jeonghan realises, no. That’s not human. To be human is to love, and he wouldn’t do that to Junhui, to Seungcheol, Joshua, to all of their friends. Every stranger is loved by someone, and just as he wishes no harm upon his friends so too would he wish no harm on those he had never met. Even if he was ugly inside, all twisted and gnarled and burnt from within as he feels like he is, the last he could give would always be his love, the only part of him left anymore, an endless well from somewhere within his shattered heart. He would give up himself for them, and if it means he lives without the light then so be it.

 

Maybe this is what is important.

 

“Do you want to come back with me?” Junhui asks. When Jeonghan opens his eyes the world seems turned on his head and he wonders if he could swim away from here. Where he would go, if he could. The ocean is broad and vast and he could head anywhere. Japan, Los Angeles, back to their seafoam coloured house on the streets of Stockholm, somewhere far away from Korea and all the memories that haunted its roads like ghosts of people he had once been.

 

“You can’t stay here,” Junhui continues, “it’s too cold. You’re really cold.”

 

“No, I can’t,” Jeonghan agrees. He lets out a long breath. “But where can I go?”

 

He doesn’t want to move, content in his world, in watching the sunrise and feeling the snow melt under his palms. There’s a heaviness in his bones, born from tiredness, born from the feeling that his name is no longer his own, and it weighs him down, holds him here, binds him to this living world. To the present.

 

Junhui lifts him up, clutches him close to his chest bridal style. It surprises him, really, how weak he’s become, his body thin and blue, how easy it is for Junhui to carry him. Carry him away from here, through the skies to somewhere safe, somewhere a million miles and ten years ago, where all this worry no longer hangs on his troubled mind.

 

“You’ll take me there, won’t you?” Jeonghan says.

 

Junhui’s grip tightens and he nods.

 

“Of course, Jeonghan. Wherever you need to go, I’ll take you there,” he says.

 

“Thank you,” Jeonghan smiles. Everything is warm and Junhui is here, Junhui is with him. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

 

A few snowflakes fall on his cheeks and Jeonghan closes his eyes and lets the morning’s birdsong lull him to sleep.

 

\--

 

_People change, Jeonghan. Stop trying to be someone else. Live now._

 

\--

 

It’s warm.

 

That’s the first thing he thinks. His eyes are shut and he feels sluggish and slow, but he’s warm, surrounded by a protective cocoon.

 

There’s a soft beep in his ears, murmurs of voices through glass, and -

 

“Jeonghan?”

 

And then Junhui.

 

The light turns harsh and naked and he twists away from it, feels the line in his arm tug as he does.

 

_Oh_

 

“What day is it?” he asks. Junhui’s entire face crumbles for the briefest of seconds and Jeonghan blinks, unsure if it was imagined.

 

“It’s Saturday. January 13th, 2017,” Junhui says.

 

“Oh,” he says, and then - “What did I do.”

 

“Something stupid.”

 

Junhui’s eye contact is unwavering and Jeonghan wants to hide. Stupid, again. Something to put Junhui at risk. Something to hurt him. Stupid, stupid.

 

“But it's fine,” Junhui continues, and he smiles like the sun, casting away the shadow that’s begun to settle on his chest. “You're alright. You're fucking heavy though, you know that? Felt like I was carrying a sack of potatoes back to the house.”

 

“Maybe you should stop making excuses when Seungcheol asks if you want to go to the gym.”

 

It doesn't hurt to talk this time, his breathing steady. His fingers are numb and his head light, but when he breathes it comes deep and rushing and Junhui’s eyes are shining, something stellar that brings a warmth to Jeonghan.

 

“You’ve been telling me that for a while now,” Junhui says.

 

“Yeah? And I bet you’ve been listening.”

 

“Sure, listening,” Junhui agrees, “listening, but not following.”

 

“Hopeless,” Jeonghan says. “Can you hand me my chart?”

 

Junhui unhooks it from the end of the bed and hands it Jeonghan, who takes the attached pen and scribbles his name at the top.

 

“Mild hypothermia,” he reads off, “damn, not even cool enough for normal hypothermia.”

 

“I mean,” Junhui starts, then pauses, “isn’t that the point?”

 

Jeonghan snorts and begins reading the rest.

 

“Brother, who brought him here, insists patient was not drunk or under any kind of influence.” He looks back at Junhui. “You’re my brother now?”

 

“They won’t let me in half the time if I say otherwise.”

 

“Alright, bro.”

 

The rest is no mystery to him, traumatic brain injury resulting in retrograde amnesia, past broken lower rib, past pneumothorax. The rest is familiar, wounds he’s mapped by heart. No lasting damage. No back to square one.

  


\--

 

He’s discharged within the day, ordered to keep warm and drink lots of fluids.

 

Jeonghan sleeps on the drive back to Seoul, waking occasionally to see the countryside painted in melting snow. The traffic is jammed as they hit the city outskirts and the sidewalks are coated in grey slush, awnings heavy, lights now strung up between trees to celebrate the holiday season.

 

It’s the first true snowfall of winter.

 

He shuts the shop and doesn’t open it until after the New Year. There’s a lingering guilt in his stomach every time he passes the photo of his mother on the front desk and he eventually moves it to his kitchen, so she doesn’t have to stare at her abandoned dream any longer.

 

Junhui’s apartment is smaller than his, less filled with the empty space left when one person lives in a space made for three. He lies in his bed, the mattress frame sagging beneath his weight, stares at the glow in the dark stars painted on the ceiling and the posters of Chinese movies he’s never heard of, of comic book heroes and photos of his family.

 

Junhui, this is Junhui. The sheets smell like him and everything has his little touch, notes scribbled in a mix of Korean and Chinese, mugs with a thin layer of matcha powder coagulating on the bottom, baby animal collections between thick textbooks about linguistics and the origin of language.

 

Having the weight of another body beside him when he sleeps brings a comfort, one he didn’t realise how much he needed. Humans are social creatures, and though his nerves burst like butterflies through his ribcage he reaches out a hand for Junhui’s, weaves their fingers together when they sit side by side on the subway, rests his head on his shoulder and shuts his eyes.

 

Their feet tangle together and the sirens ring outside, an ambulance racing down the main road. Fear is okay, fear is natural. Jeonghan learns this, and he kisses Junhui, his heart racing and his skin warm beneath his hands. He tastes like spice and red pepper, and though he is afraid, though he has no clue of what comes before or after, he’s alright. He lives in the moment, just for this once.                                                                                                                                                                                             

\--

 

“It’s so frustrating,” he says, twisting the drawstrings on his jacket to stop his hands from grabbing the pen on the table and writing all over the timetable in his lap. “Every video, every picture just feels like I’m watching someone else. I don’t recognise myself.”

 

“That’s common,” she says. She’s wearing purple today, a deep plum jacket over her black blouse. Her desk has been organised, the first time he’s seen it clean in the year he’s been seeing her. The books on her shelf all sit up straight.

 

It bothers him. He liked the clutter, liked the worn couch and the way it squeaked when he leaned on it. It made the room feel less clinical, less like he was being interrogated.

 

“You’ve lost a lot of your sense of self,” she says. “Memories that were important to your identity, especially those formed in childhood, they’re really what shapes us.”

 

“Am I ever going to get them back?” Jeonghan asks, blunt.

 

“These things take time.”

 

He reaches for the pen on the desk and writes across the header of his timetable.

 

_Yoon Jeonghan_

 

\--

 

Time is running out as far as he’s concerned. Every day the raft he’s in drifts further from shore, and no-one seems to realise he can’t swim.

 

It’s crunch time for Joshua, his thesis almost finished, all he talks about research, research, research. Seungcheol gets a promotion at his job and Junhui talks about postdoctoral study, about how his supervisor is interested in offering him more work.

 

“Never thought I’d be looking at the life of a scholar, but here we are,” Junhui says. The steam of his jjigae keeps fogging up his glasses and Jeonghan thinks it’s kind of adorable, the way he pushes them down his nose to look over them.

 

“What did you want to do before?” he asks, twirling noodles around the end of his chopstick absentmindedly.

 

“Dunno,” Junhui says. “Diplomat? Firefighter? Live translator? Superhero?” He laughs. “Still got no fucking clue what I want to do, honestly.”

 

“Really?” Jeonghan raises his eyebrows. Junhui takes a sip of his food and grimaces, fanning his face.

 

“Ouch, that’s hot,” he mutters, swallowing the offending mouthful and dabbing at his lips with his napkin. “Yeah, really. I’ve just been.. doing what I’m doing ‘cause why not, right?”

 

Jeonghan puts down his chopsticks. “Just doing what you want?” he asks.

 

Junhui nods, mouth full of food. “Doing what I want.”

 

Jeonghan leans back in his seat. The gears begin to turn, and when Junhui makes a noise of approval at his food he can’t help but smile, enamoured with all the little things.

 

“I think it’s okay not to know where I’m going, as long as I’m going somewhere,” Junhui says. “Or at least that’s what I tell myself.”

 

Jeonghan nods, watching him sip at his soup. He thinks, finally, he might have found something to believe in.

 

\--

  


“Why did you stay?” Jeonghan asks. Junhui finishes pouring his glass of juice before he answers, the sound of the liquid hitting the bottom of the cup the only noise in the still air hanging throughout the house

 

“Love.”

 

He’s wearing Jeonghan’s shirt, faded blue and stretched in the neck, sleeves cut from the sides, one half slipping from his shoulder to reveal the way the shadows linger in the hollow formed between his collarbone and the curve of his neck.

 

“Love can’t fix me.”

 

Junhui stares at his glass for another second, then at Jeonghan.

 

“I don’t want to fix you,” he says.

 

It comes out certain, a question of how he could ever think there was something to fix in the first place. There’s a part of Jeonghan that wants to test that certainty, grasp it at each end and see how long it would take to snap.

 

“How can you say that when I don’t even remember who you are?”

 

Junhui tilts his head.

 

“Because I know who _you_ are. You’re Yoon Jeonghan.”

 

“And what if I forget that, again?”

 

It’s a question that has always been on the tip of his tongue, and it’s one Junhui answers so surely.

 

“You won’t.”

 

He takes a drink from his glass, a sip where his lips barely part and the sunshine scatters across the liquid as it shifts.

 

“You don’t forget. Not anymore,” Junhui says, “You told me that.”

 

Did he?

 

_He doesn’t remember._

 

The thought tastes like panic as he swallows it, something that bursts into a carpet bomb of questions tangling his tongue and choking his throat. Did he forget? What else did he say? Has he re-lived this moment over and over, this exact conversation, every note of doubt that lingered in his voice? How many times has Junhui reassured him that he would remember, knowing full well he wouldn’t, that this had happened before?

 

“Jeonghan.”

 

Junhui’s voice is gentle, enough to snap him out of the downward spiral he’s quickly falling into. He takes Jeonghan’s hands in his and it’s enough to remind him that his feet are still on the ground, that he is very much here and alive.

 

“Did I forget?” Jeonghan asks, voice a tremble of unsureness.

 

“No,” Junhui smiles. “No, you didn’t. It’s in there somewhere.”

 

 _Somewhere_. Somewhere in the labyrinth of memories and emotions and thoughts, it’s there. He would hit a million dead ends if he were to search, but he would find it eventually. It’s there.

 

He lets out a breath, hands shaking as Junhui grasps them, thumbs running over his skin in soothing circles.

 

“You’re alright,” Junhui says. “Hannie. You’re alright.”

 

The nickname is spoken quiet, hesitant, but with a degree of familiarity that makes it sound old and worn. It fits right in and Jeonghan exhales again, sharp now, focusing on the warmth of Junhui’s skin against his.

 

_He’s alright._

 

He kisses Junhui then, his lips still wet and tasting like citrus. He kisses Junhui and Junhui lets out a sigh, something content that seems to unfurl with a soft glow in the silence of the early morning. It falls around them and Jeonghan holds him there, as the sun rises over the roof of the building behind his and seeps into the hairs on the back of his neck.

 

The wooden floor is warm beneath his bare feet when he leads Junhui away.

 

\--

 

Their kisses remain soft, but there’s a burn behind them, a something more that makes Jeonghan want to explore, kick down all the doors he’s left locked for so long. The bed is unmade and he lands on the pile of his blankets when he lets himself fall, laughing when Junhui’s elbow somehow gets trapped in his shirt upon an attempt to remove it in one smooth move.

 

“How do you sleep in this damn bed,” Junhui comments, shoving a pile of pillows onto the floor, ignoring the wardrobe malfunction entirely.

 

“Like a king,” Jeonghan says, stretches the line of his body out long and feels his joints pop, t-shirt riding up to expose a line of skin he sees Junhui’s eyes flick to. His stomach jumps and he feels the butterflies come back, feels aware of himself all of a sudden, soft and lazy, covered in scars and wounds barely healed.

 

As for Junhui, there’s no such hesitation. He’s seen him before, of course, when they’d dived into the frigid lake in the Swedish countryside, but there’s something different here, a secret held only between them, and Junhui’s confidence seems to carry a different tone that seems more like a reassurance than a bravado.

 

He’s fit and lean, all sinew and wire, scrawny muscle that sits taut under his golden skin, shifting where he leans in and allows Jeonghan’s hands to explore. It _burns_ , and that’s a surprise, the sheer heat, something he’d never noticed before when they’d shared a bed. He practically glows in the rising sun and the halo of light resulting feels surreal, Jeonghan desperately trying to commit it all to his burnt-out memory. He wishes he could press pause on this moment, stop and count the freckles that pepper Junhui’s shoulders but even then he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to, that he’d lose count of all the constellations, and so he covers them with his palms and draws comfort from their patterns.

 

Junhui’s kiss is soft, surprising, and Jeonghan goes with it, lets Junhui lead. He concentrates on the sensation, the sweetness on his lips and the sounds that filter through his ears, a soft rustle of the sheets and the steady hammer of his heartbeat, a reminder that he is very much alive, that he is here and in this moment.

 

They break contact for a second, lips parting with a soft smack that Jeonghan adds to the long list of his favourite sounds. Junhui lets out a long breath and finds his eyes, looking for reassurance that comes in the form of a smile, immediately matched. He peppers Jeonghan’s face with his kisses, and Jeonghan laughs, squirms where he finds lips pressed across the tip of his nose and the parts of his cheeks he always forgets to shave. It’s butterfly light and he likes it when Junhui does that, but he likes it more when their lips slide together more, and so he reaches up this time, runs his hand through Junhui’s thick hair and pulls him down.

 

Junhui’s body comes with it, and though Jeonghan is still clothed he feels the supernova, feels it radiate across all his scars and aching bones. He feels the weight of his limbs and the weight of his kiss, thick and deeper now, fingers digging into Junhui’s shoulder blades, their bodies fitting together in a way that feels natural. For Junhui, he guesses, it is.

 

He’s not just unlocking the door for himself.

 

This might be the both of them coming home.

 

Junhui seems indecisive as to which part of Jeonghan he wants to touch, hands running down his face, his neck, pulling gently at the straw-like locks of his poorly bleached hair. He wonders if he too is trying to commit him to memory, to discover all the parts of him that were new and find the parts he’d thought lost forever.

 

The kiss breaks and Junhui pulls back, runs his fingers from the jut of his cheekbones to across Jeonghan’s lips (he kisses them as they pass: one, two, three, four) and stares at him, face almost indecipherable until he speaks.

 

“I love you,” Junhui says, and oh. It’s familiar, as familiar as the nickname that accompanies it, burned into Jeonghan’s skin like the scars that remind him of all the gaps in his being. It’s the same sense of deja vu that plagues him every day but there’s no fear here, there’s no danger. There’s just Junhui, who loves him more than he loves all the stars in the sky. “I love you, Hannie.”

 

Jeonghan kisses him again and tastes it on his tongue. This love, mountain high and ocean deep, burning with every part of his body. There’s not a thing in the world Junhui wouldn’t do for him and honestly, it scares him, it scares him so much that when Junhui leans back and meets his eyes again he feels the hairs on his arms stand up and a shiver of goosebumps roll along his skin like a wave coursing towards the shore.

 

“You’re beautiful.”

 

His stomach lurches and Jeonghan wants to hide, find a place to escape from the intensity Junhui radiates, afraid he’ll be reduced to cinders in its wake. His hands rise to cover his face but Junhui catches him, pushes his wrists back down with a whisper of “don’t.”

 

His touch lingers and he leans over, kisses Jeonghan for what was intended to be a shorter time but Jeonghan makes longer, yanking his wrists free to grab the back of his head and pull him in. Junhui’s mouth is hot and wet and his tongue swipes across Jeonghan’s lips, a precursor to the drag of his teeth, another action in a long line of bites and licks and kisses pressed against him that make it hard for Jeonghan to think of anything except for Junhui.

 

“Fuck,” Jeonghan says, and it’s like the air in the room has changed, like something has settled upon them. Junhui kisses the curse away but Jeonghan renews it, a constant stream that comes between the smack of their lips and the heaviness of their breath, Junhui sliding against him. Every drag of their bodies together makes heat shoot through the heaviness in his stomach and he can barely stand it, wants to crawl out of his skin and pull Junhui closer until there’s nothing left between them anymore.

 

“Jeonghan,” Junhui says, hands resting on the edge of Jeonghan’s shirt. “Is this okay?”

 

Jeonghan takes a deep breath and nods, a silent approval. He’s forced to lift his back from the bed, raise his arms and twist to allow Junhui to remove his shirt. His hands twitch but he won’t cover himself. He refuses to. Junhui’s fingers run along the most prominent of his scars, the one where they’d cut him open and fixed his lung, and Jeonghan refuses the urge to hide again, even when, especially when, Junhui leans in to press a kiss against it. Breath wet, he follows it across his chest, places feather kisses up the line of his neck and the jut of his jaw, kisses him again with a sureness that makes his heart race.

 

“You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever seen,” Junhui says, and there it is again, this intensity, this feeling in his heart he’s so unsure of, an ache that seems to come from the deepest parts of him, winding with heat and making his skin prickle.

 

“I love you,” Jeonghan says, because he thinks it’s all he can. It doesn’t feel like enough to encompass this and yet it feels like everything, it feels like the world was made for only the two of them, feels like this is all that has ever mattered. That Junhui was here, through snowy streets and summer rain, morphine nightmares and all the tears Jeonghan won’t remember shedding. This is him, this is now. All this is new, but that’s okay.

 

He doesn’t need to be afraid.

 

Junhui is away from him again, kisses across his sternum, hands splayed across his pockmarked skin, and Jeonghan’s breath is ragged.

 

“Jeonghan,” Junhui says. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

 

“Don’t,” Jeonghan says. Junhui presses a kiss against his navel, and another, lower, one hand pressing at his waistband. Jeonghan threads his fingers through his hair and Junhui looks up with a smile brighter than any sunrise he’s ever seen, his eyes aflame.

 

“Okay,” he says.

 

_Okay._

 

\--

 

There’s scattered memories of Chuseok, of water and mud, of dirt that tastes thick between his teeth and salt water that burns against his wounds. He remembers the morning, fragments like bent puzzle pieces, the sound of the kettle whistling on the stove.

 

He picked up an umbrella from the bin beside the door. The doorbell on the threshold didn’t ring and a few leaves from the tree outside were stuck on the doorstep. Someone said goodbye, but it could have been Soomi, it could have been Junhui, it could have been a drunk university student sleeping under the awning of the cafe next door. He doesn’t know.

 

He remembers rain on his boots.

 

And then nothing.

 

For the longest time, nothing.

 

\--

 

“Jeonghan?”

 

His neurologist’s voice is like a rock thrown into a still pond, stirring up the murk and startling him from the recollection that suddenly feels like it’s painted on to the back of his eyelids.

 

It becomes crystal clear, all of a sudden. Memories filling up cracks in his brain, flooding through the crevices with a great roar, with a headache that radiates from his temples as he suddenly _knows_. He knows where he left all this. It’s enough to piece everything together, dreams becoming reality, castles in the sky grounded by the weight of the colour filling in between their lines, sunrises and sunsets that have passed their walls.

 

“I,” his voice feels foreign, like he’s been forced to learn to speak again. Like he’s woken up for the first time, somewhere in the solidified blur of weeks between Chuseok and Christmas Day.

 

“I celebrated my birthday in hospital.”

 

\--

 

“Happy birthday to you!”

 

The cake Seungcheol brings is coated in oreo crumbs, black and white with cream spilling from the edges in swirls.There’s a ‘26’ piped in purple frosting on the top and a set of gold candles placed neat around the rim. Not nearly twenty-six, but Jeonghan smiles with childish joy and clasps his hands together at the sight of it, of his friend (his friend, he knows Seungcheol is his friend but he doesn’t know who Seungcheol is).

 

“Is this for me?”

 

“Yes!” Seungcheol smiles. It’s a bright smile, one that takes over his whole face and deepens the creases under his eyes, shows his teeth and makes his eyes twinkle in the shitty fluorescent lighting. “You were born twenty-six years ago today.”

 

“That’s awesome!”

 

He pauses, then looks at the rest of them, Joshua, Junhui, and two more, roommates of Seungcheol’s whose names are like slates wiped blank.

 

“What day is it today?” Jeonghan asks.

 

“It’s the fourth of October.” Joshua answers. His voice is softer than Seungcheol’s, fitting for his face, delicate and pretty, long eyelashes and lips that eternally curve into a smile. Jeonghan really likes him. It’s soothing when he talks.

 

“Oh, that’s good.” Jeonghan nods, satisfied. He was born on the fourth of October. He’s twenty-six years old. “When were you born?”

 

“The thirtieth of December,” Joshua says, smiling. “I was born in the same year as you.”

 

“You’re my chingu,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t know what it means, but he knows it’s right. He knows that’s what Joshua is to him, and he feels delight when Joshua nods.

 

“Right! Seungcheol is your chingu too. We’re all the same age.”

 

Jeonghan takes a deep breath and blows out the candles nearest to him, the smoke drifting acrid in the air.

 

“What day is it today?” he asks. Seungcheol looks up from trying to cut a slice, shares a look with Joshua.

 

“It’s the fourth of October.”

 

“Oh, that’s cool! Why are we eating cake?”

 

“It’s your birthday.”

 

“Today is my birthday? That’s awesome!”

 

He claps his hands together in joy.

 

\--

 

He looks at his neurologist. Her hair is loose and long and streaked with auburn and her glasses are expensive, slim frames with a brand name printed on the arms.

 

“I remember that,” he says. “And I remember...”

 

_There’s some doors that should stay locked._

 

Jeonghan exhales a shaky breath, his heartbeat a kickdrum.

 

“There’s a locked door in my house,” he says. “Past my room, at the end of the hall.”

 

He pauses. He can see Mochi scratching at the door, meowing as he walks past.

 

“I know where the keys are now.”

 

“Is that your parent’s room?”

 

“I think so,” he says, but that’s a lie. He knows. He knows, he knows so much more. Memories of hospitals, of nurses he’ll never meet again. All the pieces in between that would fit together to make a whole of the who he is now. “I don’t think I’m ever going to remember them,” he says, and that’s not a lie. That’s the truth, and saying it is like loosening the cork on all the frustration he’s kept bottled up for so long. Instead of exploding it just escapes, fizzles and falls at his feet, and he feels only a release of the tension he’s held within for as long as he can remember.

 

“What makes you think that?” She asks. He shakes his head.

 

“There’s still nothing there. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

 

She closes the file on her desk and looks at him over the frames of her glasses. “These things can stay buried for a long time.”

 

“Maybe it will show up. Maybe it’s all locked in that room. But I don’t think it is,” he lets out a long sigh, “I don’t want to keep deluding myself that somehow I’ll remember all of a sudden. That there’s some magic trick that will make it all better. I think it’s time to bury the past.”

 

The last sentence hurts to say, cutting out the last part of him that was so hopeful for things to be normal again.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says.

 

“It’s okay,” Jeonghan replies.

 

It is.

 

It’s okay.

 

\--

 

Seungcheol meets him outside her office, clouds gathering overhead in threatening smudges like charcoal on the fiery horizon.

 

They drive in silence, Seungcheol's lips occasionally parting but no words spoken. Jeonghan can feel the anticipation in the air but he doesn't care for it. He's busy running through all the filmstrips he's uncovered, digging through his mind and working out where they fit, staring out the window at the colourscape of the evening. Seoul is the prettiest he's ever seen her, dressed to the nines in the smouldering embers of the spring sunset, the Han glittering and the billboards on the freeway beginning to light up. It seems oddly fitting.

 

Seungcheol parks under the carport, amongst the vines blooming with purple flowers and all the plants Jeonghan forgets to water. A few stray blossoms scatter at their feet with a sudden gust of wind. The sun has almost set and everything is cast in pink, caught inside a vintage filter that lingers in stripes across the floor of the bookstore. Seungcheol shuts the door behind them and locks it.

 

“I called Joshua and Junhui,” he says, “before I picked you up. They’re on their way.” Jeonghan nods.

 

“Thank you,” he says. Seungcheol smiles.

 

“Any time.”

 

The walk has never felt long before, but now it seems to stretch on into eternity. Neither of them speak and their footsteps are heavy on the stairs, sounding like a funeral march. The clatter of the single key in the lock, and then the silence of his home, still too big, still filled with mementos of someone he no longer was.

 

He takes his keys from the hook beside the stairwell, attaches the house key back to the ring, back where it belonged, alongside yellow ribbons and a ‘Daegu football festival 2013’ charm Seungcheol had fished from the depths of his car to give to him in lieu of beer money. He searches through the assorted keys as he walks down the hall, as Seungcheol’s footsteps follow his, softly, softly.

 

The door at the end of the hall is locked. It’s been locked for a long time, and though Jeonghan doesn’t know what half the keys on his keyring do anymore, he knows which key fits this lock and he pushes it open with a held breath, turns on the light.

 

His parent’s room is neat, orderly, just as it had always been. What walls aren’t lined with bookshelves are a soft blue and on the table beside the bay window sits a long empty wine glass, a lipstick stain smudged against its rim. They’ve been gone for a while, but the bed is unmade on one side, the shape of a single body left crumpled in the sheets. The book left on his mother’s table is still open, face down and waiting to be picked up again.

 

Mochi meows as she jumps onto the bed, nudging her head against the shoebox left half open nestled amongst the covers.

 

Jeonghan picks up the first note and a wet drop falls onto the paper, smudging the ink.

 

_Your name is Yoon Jeonghan. Your mother’s name is Lee Namjoo. Your father’s name is Yoon Seungmin. You were born in Seoul, on the fourth of October, 1995. You remember all this, but it’s good to write it down just in case. You keep forgetting things, like you’ll probably forget you wrote this letter. You were in an accident and hit your head. It’s alright, the doctors say it should go away._

 

_You’re in hospital right now. It’s been seven days. You broke your ribs and punctured a lung and they had to operate on you to fix it. That’s why you have bandages on. You like photography. When you were a kid you wanted to be a wizard. You like singing, but you don’t think you’ll ever make a career from it._

 

_The bookshop is your job now. You need to take good care of it. You have a cat too, her name is Mochi. Soomi, your neighbour, has been feeding her, but you should take care of her. She misses you. You’re really tired, so you’re going to stop writing._

 

It’s written on flower stationary with a shaky hand, but it’s his own handwriting through and through, his own smudged letters and shorthanded vowels.

 

He picks up the next one.

 

_Hi Jeonghan. You don’t have any trouble remembering your name, but you get worried if I don’t write it down so I’m going to write it down here anyway. Yoon Jeonghan. This letter isn’t written by you, because you’re busy, but I know you don’t like it when no-one writes a letter, so I’m helping you._

 

_You’re not in hospital anymore, but you keep forgetting things. You didn’t recognise Seungcheol even though you’d known him for half your life and you can’t seem to remember which subway stop is yours. Your friends care about you. My name is Joshua and you remember me. You ask me for help sometimes, even though the Jeonghan I met was too proud to do that._

 

_We all love you. Don’t forget that, please. We all really love you._

 

The next note is on the back of a takeout menu, stained with soy sauce and grease that still smells faintly of the jokbal restaurant Seungcheol used to treat them to on the last Friday of every month. Jeonghan’s throat starts to close up and he sniffs, running his fingers over the edge of the paper.

 

_Yoon Jeonghan._

 

_Look, here, I wrote your name. I had to show this paper to you because you always make sure I write your name. That’s okay, I don’t really mind. You’re still my friend, I still love you. We all do. You keep joking with us and pretending you’ve forgotten us but you actually haven’t in a long time. I’m glad you still have your sense of humour._

 

_Remember when we went down to Busan in 2012? It was still kind of too cold to swim but you told me you weren’t a quitter, and ran into the waves head first. You got soaked and seaweed was stuck in your hair, and I don’t think your teeth stopped chattering for hours, even after we got you changed and dried off. We went to the fish market and you picked crab and bass for dinner and we got drunk on the beach together._

 

_Your therapist says it’s good to talk about old memories, to make sure you keep exercising the brain. You told me you sometimes forget who she is and you feel like you’re wasting money re-learning everything all over again. You can’t even remember why you’re there sometimes. But the fact you don’t remember is why you’re there._

 

_If you ever forget, you should read this note to remember._

 

A polaroid is stuck to the bottom with double sided tape. Seungcheol’s face is half out of frame and Joshua and Jeonghan are pressed far too close together, cheek to cheek as they try fit into the frame which is woefully misaligned. All their smiles are big and there’s a chunk of Jeonghan’s eyebrow missing, a few dark red scratches across his forehead that have long since faded to the faintest of scars. He unconsciously touches them with his free hand, feeling the bumps where the shattered glass had ripped through his skin.

 

There’s no next letter. Just a business card, print scrawled over in dark marker.

 

_Yoon Jeonghan_

 

He turns it over and the back is empty save for a few marks where the ink bleeds through.

 

The next is a card for an 80th birthday, _Happy birthday Grandpa_ written in Seungcheol’s handwriting across the front. Upon opening the card photos spill out, scatter across the sheets like a kaleidoscope of of his past.

 

_Hey Jeonghannie. Happy birthday._

 

_I know things are hard for you. I know you’re scared every day. But that’s alright. It doesn’t make me love you any less. It doesn’t change the fact you’re the best friend I could have hoped for. I’d be the worst friend you could have hoped for if I ran away right now._

 

_Today you turn 26. You won’t even remember it. You keep asking us what day it is, why we’re here. You asked why I had a cake until we ate it all. You don’t know who I am, you don’t know who Josh is. You can’t even remember Mingyu and Jihoon’s names. And Junhui too, you don’t remember him at all. You needn’t worry because you’re still the only star in the universe to him, and he’s just really happy you’re still alive. We all are._

 

_Anyway, I don’t really know what to write. It’s hard to try and think of something. The doctors think you’ll be able to start trying to walk in a few days, but it’s going to be slow going. Don’t push yourself, please. And call me anytime you need to. If you can’t remember how to do that, ask the nurse. She’s always happy to help._

 

He takes a deep breath as he shuts it, tremors in his fingers causing a few stray scraps to slip from his grasp.

 

Next, a burning red. This card sticks when he tries to open it and he has to pry it apart, peel the misplaced line of double sided tape away and press it to the outside of the box.

 

_Jeonghan._

 

_I miss you. I love you. I love you so much._

 

His breath hitches as he reads the first line and he touches his thumb against the card, feeling the shape of the words that have been said a million times before.

 

_These things take time, I know. That’s okay, really, because we’ve got all the time in the world. You might have forgotten me but we can make new memories, and I’ll never forget you._

 

_I’ll be here, just like it’s always been._

 

It’s signed in Korean and in Chinese, a drawing of a cat beside Junhui’s name.  


He falls down onto the floor, paper spilling from his hands. They go from letters in his friends’ script to simple cards, cards with only his name written on them that clatter against the floor and fall like raindrops through his fingers. The air smells like his mother’s perfume and when Joshua’s hand touches his shoulder he almost allows himself to think it’s her, just for the briefest of moments, the memories forced to the surface as the gates are broken.

 

He’s tired. He’s so tired. Tired of fighting the current, of throwing punches at shadows that linger in street corners and the ghosts that worm their way into his bed. He doesn’t want to let go of the branch he’s clinging to but he’s already accepted that it’s time, time for this chapter to begin.

 

Jeonghan buries his face in the bedsheets and breathes in their scent, Joshua’s voice muffled and gentle, his body sore and tired and his eyes heavy with burden.

 

\--

 

For the first time in years, he doesn’t dream.

 

He wakes in the morning and Mochi is curled at his feet, her chest rising and falling like waves on the shore. She lifts a lazy eye to look at him as he stretches, as he takes in the unfamiliar room around him.

 

Joshua is asleep on the couch, hands balled loosely in his blanket. The door to Jeonghan’s room is half open and he finds his own bed unmade, a Junhui-shaped crease in the folds of the sheet. The culprit is in the kitchen, the light of his phone illuminating the sharp lines of his face. Upon the sound of Jeonghan’s footsteps Junhui looks up, smile soft.

 

“How are you?” he asks, depositing his phone beside his glass and giving Jeonghan the full force of his attention. Jeonghan swallows his answer for the moment and kisses him, warm and lazy, fingers brushing the soft hairs at the nape of his neck.

 

“I’m alright,” he says. There’s something strange lingering the pit of his stomach, a sense of deja-vu, and he thinks he’s done this before, kissed Junhui while the city slept in silence outside their windows.

 

“Alright?”

 

“Yeah. It’s just a lot to cope with.”

 

Junhui huffs a laugh, but there’s no words to follow it. Just a silence, comfortable in the still air.

 

There might always be a sense of deja vu. It's a part of all this. He runs a hand across the rough surface of the countertop and concentrates on the sound of feet on the wooden staircase. A reminder there’s life in this house. That they’re all still here.

 

Seungcheol smiles when he sees them standing in the kitchen. He brings the bags over and places them on the bench, starts to unload the items. For once, he doesn’t smell like cigarettes.

 

“Good morning,” he says. It’s gentle and low, even though Joshua would sleep through a hurricane.

 

“Thank you,” Jeonghan says. It comes out so soft he surprises even himself, but Seungcheol nods, eyes knowing.

 

“It’s the least I could do.”

 

“You’ve done more than enough, Seungcheol,” Junhui says. Jeonghan leans into him and Junhui slips a hand under the hem of his shirt, splays his palm against his skin and lets it rest there. Comfort, spreading through his sore and damaged body like panacea.

 

Mochi meows as she comes trotting out of the hall, eyes still sleepy.

 

“I’ll feed her,” Junhui says, as if it’s a bother. As if he doesn’t adore her with all of his heart. He disappears and Jeonghan finishes the last of his drink, sets down the glass on the counter..

 

“I think I’m gonna sell the shop,” he says, sudden.

 

Seungcheol pours the last of the water into the pot on the stove and turns to him without a word, just a tilt of his head.

 

“It’s complicated,” Jeonghan says, as the only way of explanation.

 

“I’m good at complicated things,” Seungcheol says. The ramyun packet crackles when he rips it open, and Junhui returns, Mochi following him with a gentle tap of her paws on the hardwood. She leaps onto the counter and Jeonghan holds out a hand for her, lets her rub her face against his knuckles while the three of them stand in silence.

 

In the lounge Joshua has woken, grunting where he stretches and rolls in the sheets. He scratches the corner of his eye with his knuckle and asks “Am I missing the town meeting?”

 

“You’re missing Mochi’s cult,” Junhui says, peering over his shoulder.

 

“Even better.”

 

He clicks his tongue and Mochi’s ears perk up, her head swivelling to stare at him. Junhui mimics the noise and Mochi turns to him, stands up and trots across the bench to tap her paw on his arm.

 

“Did you tell Jun what you told me?” Seungcheol asks. He upends the spice packets into the pot and places the lid on it.

 

“I think I’m gonna sell the shop,” Jeonghan repeats. Junhui looks down at him, their eyes meeting for a long moment, something Jeonghan can’t quite verbalise exchanged between them. “There’s nothing left for me here,” he says. “This house is too big, too empty. It’s time for a new beginning.”

 

Junhui smiles, crooked front teeth and crows feet in all.

 

“I think that’s a good idea,” he says.

 

Across the kitchen, Seungcheol rolls his eyes. The pot on the stove starts to boil and Joshua has already fallen back to sleep, hair mussed and blankets tangled around his body. It’s terrifying, but Jeonghan thinks he’s ready. This is his story, and every tale needs to start somewhere.

 

\--

 

The gap in his chest is still there, a fissure he thinks he might not ever fill. But it’s not longer a wound, it’s filled with the salt of the ocean and the snowflakes that melt in piles. Rain clouds gather overhead and spit warm water, drops that jump across the roadside and splatter the toes of his boots.

 

That’s okay.

 

The greatest harvests are preceded by the monsoon, and one day the flowers will bloom and the sun will kiss his cheeks. Autumn will come and though the world may never be the same again, though he may never be quite alright, he’ll be here.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you to manabishi for being an incredible beta and going above and beyond in both helping fix up this fic and motivating me. without you, it would have been a smouldering pile of useless plotlines. you're amazing. 
> 
> thank you again to juli, for being willing to spend hours telling me to remove commas and spellchecking. 
> 
> and thank you to you, for reading.


End file.
